Iran’s leader administered a brazen insult to the United States when he told visiting Japanese PM Shinzo Abe on Thursday, June 13, that he did not consider President Donald Trump “worthy” of an exchange of messages with him. “I do not have and will not have any response for him,” he told the Japanese prime minister, crudely knocking down his visitor’s effort to ease the spiraling US-Iranian tensions. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei went on to say that Trump’s promise not to seek regime change in Iran was “a lie” and he did not believe Washington’s offer of “honest negotiations” with Tehran. Not content with that insult, Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif suggested that an American provocation was behind the “reported attacks on Japan-related” oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman. That they took place while Japanese PM Shinzo Abe was meeting supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was “beyond suspicious,” he tweeted.
