Zarif slams Bolton with ’10-year challenge’ meme

Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has hit out at US National Security Advisor John Bolton’s anti-Iran stance, saying the Iran hawk has long supported a military attack against the country.

In a play on the viral 10-year challenge meme on social media, Zarif mocked Bolton’s calls for a strike on Iran, posting on his twitter account the titles of two separate articles from 2009 and 2019, in which Bolton urged attack on Iran.

In the first article, published by The Washington Post on July 2, 2009, Bolton advised Israel to use “military force” against what he had said was “Tehran’s nuclear weapons program,” repeating Washington’s claims that Iran’s nuclear activities had a military aspect. The second article reflected a revelation by The Wall Street Journal last Sunday that showed Bolton had asked the Pentagon in September to prepare military options for an attacking on Iran.

The Journal reported that the Pentagon developed plans for a strike on Iran in response to the Bolton’s request, but it was unclear whether those plans were shared with the White House.

Unnamed sources told the paper that the request raised alarm within the Defense and State Departments.

“It definitely rattled people,” a former senior administration official told the newspaper. “People were shocked. It was mind-boggling how cavalier they were about hitting Iran,” the official added.

Bolton frequently promoted the military option against Iran and long pressed his claims about Iran’s military weapons program. The Iran hawk was among the main opponents of the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and the six world powers.

He wrote an op-ed in The New York Times in 2015, titled To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran, rehashing his aggressive remarks.

Earlier this month, Zarif reacted to a picture, which showed the US official wearing virtual reality goggles allegedly reconstructing the past on a tour in the Israeli-occupied holy city of Jerusalem al-Quds.

The group has been behind most of the terrorist attacks which have claimed the lives of nearly 17,000 Iranians since the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979.