Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif criticized Poland on Friday for jointly hosting a global summit with the U.S. focused on the Middle East, particularly Iran, calling it a "desperate anti-Iran circus."
Earlier on Friday, Washington announced that the summit would be held in Warsaw from February 13 to 14, and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the meeting would focus on stability and security in the Middle East, including the "important element of making sure that Iran is not a destabilizing influence."
U.S. President Donald Trump's top diplomat is visiting a number of Middle Eastern countries this week in an effort to shore up support in the region amid a number of ongoing fronts, from the U.S. troop withdrawal from Syria to the Saudi-Qatar rift to the killing of U.S.-based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Pompeo, in the midst of his eight-day trip through the region, said that the U.S. is "redoubling" its efforts to put pressure on Iran and sought to convince allies in the region that it was committed to fighting ISIL despite Trump's recent decision to pull U.S. troops out of Syria.
Pompeo told Fox News the summit would include representatives from countries around the world to address Iran's regional influence as the Trump administration has sought to pressure Tehran.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks with journalists as he tours the newly inaugurated Al-Fattah Al-Alim mosque in Egypt's New Administrative Capital, east of Cair, January 10, 2019. /VCGÂ Photo
Writing on his Twitter account, Zarif said: "Reminder to host/participants of anti-Iran conference: those who attended last U.S. anti-Iran show are either dead, disgraced, or marginalized. And Iran is stronger than ever."
He went on to write, "While Iran saved Poles in WWII, it now hosts desperate anti-Iran circus." Relations between Tehran and Washington are once more highly fraught following the decision in May by Trump to pull the U.S. out of a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six major powers and to re-impose sanctions.
In a shift earlier this week, the European Union moved to impose some sanctions on Iran.
The decision came after Denmark's government said earlier that it suspected an Iranian intelligence service of carrying out an assassination plot against an Iranian dissident on its soil last year.
(With inputs from Reuters and Xinhua)