Iranian foreign minister denies calls to wipe Israel 'off the map,' assassination plots to kill Trump
Iran’s foreign minister denied the Islamic Republic is trying to assassinate President Donald Trump and other top administration officials from his first term in an exclusive interview Monday on "Special Report."
Abbas Araghchi also denied that Iran wants to wipe Israel "off the map" and downplayed calls for "Death to America" in his first appearance on the network since the U.S. struck three of Iran’s nuclear facilities in June.
"You know, we have always said, the supreme leader and other officials in Iran have always said that ‘Death to America’ is, in fact, death to the, you know, hegemonic policies of the United States, not to the people of the United States," Araghchi claimed.
"Yes, there are some, perhaps, radicals, persons or groups here and there in different places, inside, outside of Iran, who may say something like what you said, but that has never been our policy, and they will never be our policy in the future."
The senior Iranian official told Fox News chief political anchor Bret Baier that it’s never been his country’s official position to try and assassinate Trump or previous administration officials following the 2020 killing of Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) elite Quds Force.
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"This is not our policy to kill anybody outside Iran, let alone the president of another country," Araghchi said.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced in November that the IRGC had tasked Afghan national Farhad Shakeri, 51, with surveilling and formulating a plan to kill then-President-elect Trump.
Shakeri, who was believed to still be at large in Iran at the time the complaint was released, was charged with providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization and murder-for-hire, among other charges.
The DOJ also charged a member of the IRGC in 2022 with plotting to murder former Trump national security advisor John Bolton.
Trump said earlier this year that he’s left instructions for Iran to be "obliterated" should it succeed in any assassination attempt on his life.
"There won’t be anything left," he told reporters.
In response to questions about Iran’s role supporting its terror proxies and targeting Israel, Araghchi—who has served as Iran’s foreign minister for nearly a year—told "Special Report that it isn’t Tehran’s policy to eliminate Israel.
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"This has never been Iran's policy to wipe out Israel from the map," he claimed.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has referred to Israel as a "cancerous tumor" that will be "uprooted and destroyed."
Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, at a "World without Zionism" conference in 2005, repeated a phrase from Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran's Islamic revolution, that Israel "must be wiped off the map."
Most recently, Iranian Gen. Ebrahim Jabbari said on state TV in June that Iran must "annihilate" Israel, according to a translation of the remarks by MEMRI TV, the media arm of the Middle East Media Research Institute.
Araghchi told "Special Report" that Iran remains open to indirect talks with the Trump administration following the strikes on Natanz, Isfahan and Fordow, but cautioned that Iran will not give up nuclear enrichment in any potential deal.