TEHRAN - Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has said that that “surrealism” shapes the United States’ foreign policy.

The remarks by Zarif came in response to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who had accused Tehran of testing a missile “capable of carrying nuclear warheads” in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 2231.

“‘Surrealism’ is now the US’ modus operandi in its foreign affairs: While itself violates UNSCR 2231—and even threatens to punish those who don’t wish to violate it in abiding with illegal US sanctions—it now falsely accuses Iran of violating the very SAME resolution. #Hypocrisy,” Zarif tweeted late on Sunday.

The resolution 2231, which endorsed the nuclear agreement between Iran and the 5+1 group in July 2015, ‘calls upon’ Iran not to build nuclear-capable missiles. It does not ban conventional missile program by Tehran.

Washington itself started breaching the resolution in May after it left the nuclear agreement. In the following months, it took further steps in breach of the resolution by restoring the sanctions that had been lifted under the agreement, and even threatened the countries potentially ignoring the bans with “secondary sanctions.”

On Sunday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi said Pompeo was talking in “paradoxical” terms since he had predicated his remarks on a resolution that the U.S. itself had breached.

Qassemi also repeated the country’s assertion that the Iranian missile program was entirely defensive.

He asserted that Iran had to equip itself with “whatever it needs to defend itself” in the light of the past and ongoing tensions in the region, and its own past experience of coming under an imposed war by Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in the 1980s.

SP/PA