Iran slams US plan to declare Brotherhood terrorists

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Wednesday criticised the United States for seeking to blacklist the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group.

"The United States is supporting the biggest terrorist in our region, and that is Israel," Zarif told reporters on the sidelines of the Asian Cooperation Dialogue in Doha.

"Trying to designate others as terrorists, the United States (is) not in a position, theoretically and practically, to start naming others as terrorist organisations," he said when asked about US President Donald Trump's bid to designate the Brotherhood as a terrorist group.

"We reject any attempt by the United States in this regard." In April, the US declared Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards a "foreign terrorist organisation".

The Brotherhood, a nearly century-old Islamist movement born in Egypt with pockets of support across the Arab world, was designated a terrorist organisation by Cairo after the military in 2013 ousted Mohamed Morsi, a democratically ...