Iran fires back at Trump with a ban on U.S. citizens from entering the country
It’s only been a week and President Donald Trump has picked fights with more countries than you can count on one hand.
On Saturday afternoon, Iran responded to Trump’s most recent bellicosity with its own order to bar U.S. citizens from entering that country, CNN reported.
The move responds to an executive order Trump issued Friday that prevents nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Iran, from entering the U.S. Trump also temporarily halted all programs that bring refugees into the U.S., and indefinitely barred refugees from Syria from coming here.
“The decision of the Government of the United States to impose restrictions on the travel of Muslims to the United States—though temporarily for three months—is a clear insult to the Islamic world, and especially the great nation of Iran; and despite claims of being made to combat terrorism and protecting the people of the United States, it will be recorded in history as a great gift to extremists and their supporters,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on its website.
Iran also claimed the Trump administration’s new policy would create more terrorism and instability, not less.
“The imprudent decision of the U.S. Government to apply collective discrimination against citizens of Muslim countries will only serve to provide a fertile ground for more terrorist recruitment by deepening the ruptures and fault-lines which have been exploited by extremist demagogues to swell their ranks with disenfranchised and marginalized youth,” the statement said.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif confirmed the move in a series of tweets on Saturday, the last of which pointed out that, “Unlike the U.S.,” Iran’s response would not be retroactive.
Ouch.
In addition to Iran, Trump’s order bars people from Syria, Libya, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. Last year, nearly 85,000 refugees were legally allowed in the U.S., a number Trump wants to reduce to 50,000, according to WCVB.