NEW YORK (AP) – Iran’s top diplomat scolded President Donald Trump on Wednesday for a weekend tweet about a nonexistent Iranian missile launch and essentially ruled out renegotiating or launching follow-up talks to a landmark nuclear accord that Trump is threatening to dismantle.
“We need to check our facts before we make statements,” Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said in an interview with The Associated Press. “It worries me that people play with facts and produce alternative facts.”
He also criticized a recent referendum on independence by Iraq’s Kurdish minority as “dangerous” to stability in a Middle East already beset by efforts to defeat the Islamic State extremist group and civil wars in Syria and Yemen.
And Zarif seemed to float the possibility of a prisoner exchange for several detained Americans in Iran, responding to a question about their fate by raising the situation of several Iranians held or being pursued by the United States for sanctions violations.
But the Iranian minister reserved his sharpest scorn for Trump, who on Saturday blasted Iran in a Tweet that renewed criticism of its 2015 nuclear deal with six major powers including the United States.