A top Iranian official has dismissed reports about the intention of Iranian foreign minister to resign and his country’s exit from the 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers.
President Hassan Rouhani’s chief of staff Mahmoud Vaezi tweeted, “The News about Doctor Zarif’s resignation and Iran’s exit from JCPOA, published simultaneously are both lies, based on ill intentions and are against national interests”.
Vaezi warned the media against the spread of fake news and called on them to be cautious and not to trumpet what enemies of the state want to spread.
A hardliner politician had tweeted January 11 that Zarif was about to resign.
Another tweet had spread rumors about Iran leaving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Actions, or Iran’s nuclear deal.
The news of Zarif’s alleged resignation and Iran’s withdrawal from the JCPOA were also refuted by the Rouhani administration’s news dissemination chief Alireza Moezi, who in a tweet rejected the stories as “suspicious” and “part of a plot”.
Moezi said: “Disseminating such fake news plays into the hand of Donald Trump, who wants to challenge Iran’s economy by imposing sanctions in order to rob Iranians of their hope and future.”
Top photo: Iranian President Hassan Rohani (center) along with Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan (right) and chief of staff Mahmoud Vaezi (left)
