Zarif denies Iran is on brink of ‘collapse,’ blasts Trump ‘advisers’

“President Trump has been convinced that we are about to collapse so he doesn’t want to talk to a collapsing regime,” Iran’s foreign minister said on Saturday

By Associated Press

Iran’s foreign minister claimed Saturday that U.S. President Donald Trump is receiving bad advice if he believes an American “maximum pressure” campaign against his country will cause the government in Tehran to collapse.

The comments were related to the Trump administration’s re-imposition of U.S. sanctions in a campaign of “maximum pressure,” which have taken a severe toll on the Iranian economy and sent Iran’s currency plunging.

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told a group of top defense officials and diplomats at the Munich Security Conference that the information provided to the president has dissuaded Trump from accepting offers from other leaders to mediate between Washington and Tehran.

“President Trump has been convinced that we are about to collapse so he doesn’t want to talk to a collapsing regime,” Zarif said.

To support his argument, the Iranian minister cited Trump’s decision to pull out unilaterally in 2018 from Iran’s nuclear deal with the U.S. and other world powers because the accord failed to address Iran’s ballistic missile program or regional activities and needed to be renegotiated.

Since then, the Trump administration’s re-imposition of U.S. sanctions in a campaign of “maximum pressure” has taken a severe toll on the Iranian economy and sent Iran’s currency plunging.

“I believe President Trump, unfortunately, does not have good advisers,” Zarif said. “He’s been wanting for Iran to collapse since he withdrew from the nuclear deal.”

Zarif also claimed the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in a U.S. drone strike in Iraq on Jan. 3 was a miscalculation by Washington that has galvanized support for Iran instead of increasing pressure on the regime.

Meanwhile, the Iranian regime has faced widespread protests from citizens who oppose the hundreds of millions of dollars the government funnels to regional terror proxies, while the local economy continues to suffer.

Javad Zarif