Iran says US ‘action group’ won’t overthrow Iranian state

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif said on Sunday that a new Iran Action Group in the US State Department aimed to overthrow the Islamic Republic, but would fail.

He was speaking on the 65th anniversary of a US-backed coup that overthrew a democratically elected Iranian prime minister, an occasion when anti-American sentiment runs high in the Islamic Republic.

Comparing fresh US sanctions on Tehran imposed by President Donald Trump with the 1953 coup that ousted nationalist Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, Zarif said Tehran will not let history repeat itself.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday named senior policy adviser Brian Hook as special representative for Iran in charge of the Iran Action Group to coordinate Trump’s pressure campaign against the Islamic Republic following Washington’s withdrawal from an international nuclear deal with Tehran.

Zarif tweeted, “65 years ago today, the US overthrew the popularly elected democratic government of Dr Mossadegh, restoring the dictatorship & subjugating Iranians for the next 25 years. Now an “Action Group” dreams of doing the same through pressure, misinformation & demagoguery. Never again.”

The US and Britain orchestrated the removal of Mossadegh after he acted to nationalize Iran’s oil industry, restoring to power Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. The Western-backed shah was toppled in Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani said the coup was the best historical lesson that Americans cannot be trusted.

“How dare you talk about the freedom of the Iranian nation with your dark record of the August 19 coup, and the appointment of a puppet totalitarian regime,” Larijani was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA, referring to the shah’s rule.

“Americans are imposing sanctions but they claim they are supporting freedom, human rights, and global and regional security,” Larijani said.