‘Ridiculous’: US disarmament envoy slams Iranian MP for proposing $3mn bounty on Trump’s head

A senior US diplomat said an offer of money for the killing of US President Donald Trump, made by an Iranian lawmaker, serves as clear proof of Tehran’s “terrorist underpinnings.”

“It’s just ridiculous, but it gives you a sense of the terrorist underpinnings of that regime, and that regime needs to change its behavior,” US Ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament Robert Wood told reporters in Geneva, Switzerland, on Tuesday, as quoted by Reuters.

The diplomat was commenting on a remark by Iranian lawmaker Ahmad Hamzeh, who promised to pay US$3,000,000 to anyone who kills Trump. Hamzeh said it would be revenge for the death of top Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a US drone strike earlier this month, and called for Tehran to develop nuclear weapons.

After Soleimani was killed, Iran announced it was rolling back its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal – a step that pushed the European parties to the treaty, such as France, Germany and the UK, to launch an investigation into Tehran’s alleged non-compliance. In response, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif warned that the country will ditch the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) if EU states file a complaint with the UN Security Council over its nuclear commitments.

Zarif explained that Iran has been scaling down its commitments under the JCPOA nuclear treatment in accordance with the mechanisms laid out in the agreement, and had only begun to do so after the US abandoned the deal in 2018 and re-imposed sanctions on Iran.

The Iranian FM’s words send a “very, very negative message,” the US disarmament ambassador told reporters.

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