Days ahead of a summit focused on Iran, the Islamic Republic's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, has dismissed it as already doomed to fail.
Zarif's mentor and former Foreign Minister, Kamal Kharrazi, also cautioned participant countries at the Warsaw summit that they cannot "hide" from Tehran.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News last month that Washington would jointly host a global summit focused on the Islamic Republic and the Middle East in Poland in February, but senior U.S. diplomats later toned down and referred to the conference as a gathering assigned to review the security situation in the Middle-East, denying that Iran will be at the top of its agenda.
The international gathering is scheduled to take place in Warsaw from February 13 to 14.
Speaking to Majles' (parliament) website on Sunday, February 10, Zarif reiterated that the U.S.-sponsored conference on is already a failure since its sponsors are retreating from their initial stance on the event.
Earlier, Zarif had labeled the planned forum as a “desperate anti-Iran circus.”
The Islamic Republic authorities have unanimously condemned the meeting as an "anti-Iran" gathering.
However, senior U.S. officials have pointed out that conference will not have an anti-Iran agenda.
"This is not an anti-Iran meeting or coalition-building exercise," a senior U.S. administration official told a January 28 telephone briefing with journalists.
The February 13-14 Ministerial to Promote Peace and Stability in the Middle East will include sessions on the situation in Syria and Yemen, missile development, terrorism, illicit finance, and cybersecurity, U.S. and Polish officials have said.
The U.S. official briefing journalists said on January 28, the ministerial has been focused from the start on "exploring a range of issues important to the region’s security and prosperity."
The official added on condition of anonymity that U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will certainly discuss U.S. concerns regarding "Iran's destructive policies in the region" at the meeting while adding that it was "difficult to speak about the region’s challenges without referencing Iran."
U.S. envoy to the UN Jonathan Cohen had said on January 22 that the Warsaw ministerial was not aimed at demonizing or attacking Iran.
Furthermore, Pompeo also stressed last month that the meeting would “focus on Middle East stability and peace and freedom and security, and that includes an important element of making sure that Iran is not a destabilizing influence.”
The Islamic Republic authorities are particularly enraged by the fact that Tehran has not been invited to participate in the gathering.
Referring to the fact, Zarif said, the conference has failed prior to its kick-off.
The Secretary of the Islamic Republic's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), Ali Shamkhani, has also maintained that the "anti-Tehran" conference indicated that U.S. sanctions against Iran had yielded no results.
"Turning sanctions with utmost pressures into seminars and conferences means that you are empty-handed," Shamkhani told reporters in Tehran. But other high-ranking Iranian officials, including President Hassan Rouhani have admitted that U.S. sanctions are deeply impacting Iran’s economy, which according to him faces its hardest challenge in forty years.
