“You're so used to lecturing others,” Mousavi tweeted on Sunday.
The tweet was a response to an earlier one by a member of the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based international affairs think tank, against Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
Barbara Slavin had taken on Zarif for critiquing those within the United States and elsewhere, who “don't think black lives matter.”
Mousavi told Slavin that is exactly what Zarif is asking US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to do.
Zarif’s tweet had also incorporated a 2018 US State Department statement addressing rioting in Iran that was later found out to have been provoked by foreign, including American, services with subversive intentions. The Iranian foreign minister had ironically crossed out all references to Iran in that statement and replaced them with references to the United States to apparently indicate that Washington’s criticism of others has to be directed against itself instead.
However, Washington’s deep-seated habit of just telling others what to do and not tolerating criticism has made it feel “awkward to be reminded that YOU ‘should not be so arrogant as to tell Iran,’” Mousavi noted.
The exchanges came amid angry protests across the United States that have been prompted by a white police officer’s recent choking to death of African American citizen George Floyd.
The murder involved the Minneapolis officer, Derek Chauvin’s forcing the unarmed victim to the ground and planting his knee into his neck. Chauvin would not let up the pressure, although, Floyd was heard repeatedly pleading for his life.
The officers had been called to the scene -- a Cup Foods’ store on the 3700 block of Chicago Avenue South -- as the African American was reported to be attempting to use forged documents.
Police spokesperson John Elders claimed that Floyd had resisted arrest, and also alleged that he had started “going into medical distress” after the officers forced him into handcuffs. The viral footage, however, came to clearly disprove the account.
Mousavi reminded that the US’s deadly abuse of its black community has been well documented as in the case of Floyd, whose murder was caught on a bystanders’ camera. “Look at the graphics. Certainly you noticed that. You're ’on firmer ground when it comes to’ US,” he told Slavin.
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