Poland Excluded Iran From Middle East Summit Over Tehran's Tensions With US

WARSAW (Sputnik) - Iran has not been invited to a Middle East conference in Warsaw due to its strained ties with the United States, Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Bartosz Cichocki said Friday.

"It became clear that it [inviting Iran] was a closed topic because of a bad US-Iranian relationship", Cichocki told Polish RMF FM radio station.

He argued that Iran’s or a similar point of view on the crises and the way forward in the Middle East would be presented at the meeting on 13-14 February.

READ MORE: US-Polish Conference on Middle East Aims to Divide Europeans — Tehran

"It will be aimed at sources of instability in the Middle East. It is designed to launch a process that Iran will eventually be part of because these sources of instability cannot be addressed without Iran", Cichocki said.

Next week's conference will be co-hosted by Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who initially said the ministerial meeting would focus on curbing Iran’s "destabilising influence".

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif slammed the summit as an "anti-Iran circus", while Russia said it had declined to attend a hastily-prepared event that offered a "simplified unilateral approach" to the problem. European foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini has likewise declined to attend.

The United States has reportedly backtracked on the plan to build a global coalition against Iran at the summit after EU objections.