Araghchi Likens Rubio to Pompeo Over ‘Eventually You Have to Eat’ Remark

Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Wednesday morning hit back at US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who had said economic pressure would eventually wear Tehran down, and compared him to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. In a Persian post on his Telegram channel, which the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson's channel said he had also put out on X, Araghchi wrote that eight years ago Pompeo, whom he called a cartoon character, had told Iranians to obey the White House if they wanted something to eat, and that Rubio was now repeating the same nonsense. Araghchi added that Rubio's own Cuban compatriots were victims of the same policy. Leaving aside what he called its inhumanity, he wrote, it is delusions and baseless notions of this kind that lead US policies to fail. Rubio spoke to reporters in Paris on Tuesday after a G7 meeting, at the State Department's George C. Marshall Center in the Hôtel de Talleyrand. He said the blockade and sanctions were doing such damage to Iran's economy that major combat operations were no longer needed, though the US military stood ready if Iran crossed certain red lines, and that the economic pressure would grow worse. "The problem is the conditions they continue to place are absurd," Rubio said of Iran's terms for a deal, adding that "eventually you have to eat" and pay one's own fighters and security forces. Earlier on Wednesday, Araghchi published a letter dated November 10 to UN Secretary-General António Guterres, Security Council President Sanita Pavļuta-Deslandes and IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi. In it he asked them to condemn the State Department's offer, published on November 6 and 7 through its Rewards for Justice program, of up to $20 million for information on Iran's nuclear program, and asked Grossi to bring the matter before the IAEA Board of Governors.