US openly sowing seeds of hostility, reject Pompeo's baseless allegation: Iran
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As tensions soared, Iran President Hassan Rouhani said his country "never seeks war" with the United States.
Iran today slammed US secretary of state Mike Pompeo's joint statement in New Delhi in which he accused Iran of being the "world's largest state sponsor of terror".
The Iran embassy in India said it "categorically rejects baseless allegations of the US secretary of state levelled against Iran", adding, "the US is openly sowing seeds of hostility against the peaceful people of Iran through maximum economic pressures in particular unfair sanctions as a brutal act of terrorism."
"The US has defined its interest in generating and aggravating regional disputes, and exacerbating conflict and insecurity to fuel an arms race and create bigger markets for its weapons," it said.
"During the last decades, US interventions in the region has disturbed the natural harmony, domestic dynamics and ecosystem of communities in the region," the Iranian embassy said in a statement.
Iran alleged that that rise of extremist groups like Taliban, Al-Qaeda and ISIS were "contemporary demonstration of US adventurism" asserting that "the crises in the region, including in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, were rooted in "occupation", illegal military interventions, hegemonic and social engineering policies of the United States."
"Iran as a victim of terrorism which has lost 17,000 of its citizens by US-supported terrorist group (MKO/PMOI) and being in the forefront of fighting these groups such as ISIS, has identified its regional interests with good-neighborliness, and peace and stability in the highly sensitive Persian Gulf region," the statement added.
"Iran is determined to actively contribute to the promotion of an effective "regional dialogue" for peace and security," it said.
As tensions soared, Iran President Hassan Rouhani said his country "never seeks war" with the United States. Last week US President Trump had said he had pulled back from retaliatory strikes against Iran after it shot down a US surveillance drone.
The US administration instead imposed new sanctions against Iran targeting supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and top officials.
On Wednesday, while giving an interview to a US network Trump said there won't be any "boots on the ground" if the US undertook military action against the Iranian regime, while adding that "it wouldn't last very long."