13th January, 2019
The Iran’s foreign ministry summoned a senior Polish diplomat on Sunday to protest Poland’s jointly hosting a global summit with the U.S. focused on the Middle East, particularly Iran, CGTN reported the state news agency IRNA.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Friday that the summit, to be held in Warsaw on February 13-14, would focus on stability and security in the Middle East, including on the “important element of making sure that Iran is not a destabilizing influence.”
An Iranian foreign ministry official told Poland’s charge d’affaires in Tehran that Iran saw the decision to host the meeting as a “hostile act against Iran” and warned that Tehran could reciprocate, IRNA added.
Poland’s charge d’affaires provided explanations about the conference and said “it was not anti-Iran,” the agency added.
On Friday, Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif criticized Poland for hosting the meeting and wrote on Twitter: “Polish government can’t wash the shame: while Iran saved Poles in WWII, it now hosts desperate anti-Iran circus.”
Zarif was referring to Iran hosting more than 100,000 Polish refugees during the Second World War. Relations between Tehran and Washington are highly fraught following the decision in May by President Donald Trump to pull the U.S. out of a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six major powers and to reimpose sanctions.