Iran Raps U.S. Report Keeping It on Terror List

Iran rejected an annual U.S. report that keeps Tehran on a list of state sponsors of terrorism as reflecting double standards, media reports said Thursday.

The foreign ministry was reacting to a State Department report released Wednesday that kept Cuba, Iran, Syria and Sudan on its list of so-called state sponsors of terrorism.

The report also highlighted what it said was Iran's role in supporting and funding the regime of President Bashar Assad in its fight against Syrian rebels.

"Accusing Iran of supporting terrorism is politicized and based on double standards," ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham said in a statement reported by the official IRNA news agency.

She questioned Washington's anti-terrorism intentions, recalling "innocent people who fall victim" to U.S. drone attacks in the region as well as "the turning of a blind eye to Zionist (Israeli) crimes against the Palestinians."

She also took issues with what has been the progressive removal from international terror lists of the People's Mujahedeen of Iran, an exiled opposition group that says it seeks the overthrow of Iran's Islamic regime through peaceful means.

Banned in Iran, Tehran has listed it as a terror group for carrying out bombings and assassinations.

Britain struck the group off its terror list in 2008, followed by the European Union in 2009 and the United States in 2012.

That, Afkham said, "also poses a serious challenge to the claim of U.S. statesmen in combating terrorism."