‘B Team’ Trying to Push Trump into Unwanted War with Iran: Zarif
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the B team - Bolton, Bin Salman, Bin Zayed and "Bibi" - is making all-out attempts to push US President Donald Trump into a war with Iran.
A "B team" of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US national security adviser John Bolton, and leaders in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates is trying to push Trump "into a confrontation he doesn't want”, Zarif said in an interview broadcast on the US cable show Fox News Sunday.
"They have tried to bring the US into a war" with Iran, Zarif said, with the goal, "at least" of “regime change”.
Bolton, appearing on the same Fox News program, said the US goal is not regime change, but a change in behavior, specifically an end to Iran's nuclear weapons program and ballistic missile testing.
Elsewhere in the interview, Zarif said the goal of US sanctions is to "put as much pressure on the Iranian people as possible so they will take action" against the Iranian government.
Zarif said US officials are "wrong, their hope and delusion."
He said the fact that Trump withdrew the United States from the 2015 nuclear agreement between Tehran and world powers "would not put the US in the good list of law-abiding nations."
Zarif said the US withdrawal from the nuclear pact shows the Iranian people that "engagement does not have dividends. They should not trust the signature of the president of the United States”.