A top advisor to Iran’s nuclear negotiating team jumped to the defense of Russia on Tuesday, calling US President Joe Biden a “racist piece of garbage” for calling Vladimir Putin a war criminal.
“This racist piece of garbage was vice-president when Obama and Saudi Arabia destroyed Yemen. Biden also supported the invasion and occupation of Iraq. He was involved in the decimation of Libya & he supported ISIS/Al-Qaeda in Syria… Don’t racist western elites have any shame?” Mohammad Marandi tweeted.
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Marandi, an adviser to the Iranian negotiating delegation in Vienna, made his remarks in a tweet above a video of Biden calling the Russian president a war criminal.
“You may remember I got criticized for calling Putin a war criminal. Well, the truth of the matter is, we saw what happened in Bucha; this warrants he is a war criminal,” Biden told reporters on Monday.
The US president was speaking about the atrocities in Bucha after images shared over the weekend showed corpses of civilians thrown around the streets of the Ukrainian town.
Russia has denied these accusations, which were shown following their withdrawal from the town after controlling it since first invading Ukraine last month.
On Sunday, the Iranian advisor Marandi also denied the Bucha massacre in defense of Moscow.
This is not the first time Marandi has made rash comments.
On April 1, he threatened Saudi Arabia and said they were “playing with fate.”
“[Saudi Arabia] knows Patriot air defenses can’t block the missiles and drones of #Yemen and #ansarallah. Successful repeat attacks on key oil instillations make this quite clear,” he tweeted.
Marandi has been a key advisor in the indirect talks between Washington and Tehran, which have been taking part for over a year.
The Iranians refuse to meet directly with the American delegation in Vienna. In December, Marandi said he refused to meet with anyone associated with US Special Envoy for Iran Rob Malley.
Marandi was reportedly born in the US, making him an American citizen. He is Iran’s former health minister and has boasted about his participation in “fighting the US backed invasion of Iran.”
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