Iran spokesman Baghaei responds to Rubio's piracy accusation

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei responded to remarks by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who accused Iran of attacking ships and compared the alleged actions to those of Caribbean pirates. Baghaei made the response in a post on the social media platform X, according to Mehr News Agency (MNA).

According to the report, Rubio said that "we haven't seen anything like this since World War II and the pirates of the Caribbean" while accusing Iran of attacking ships. Baghaei contrasted that statement with earlier remarks attributed to the US president. He said that on 1 May 2026 the US president, while boasting about seizing commercial ships and confiscating oil cargoes, said: "we're like PIRATES. We're sort of like PIRATES."

In his post, Baghaei suggested that the secretary of state appeared to have overlooked the president's own statement. "Perhaps the president won't be too pleased to learn that his secretary of state has so quickly forgotten his own proud claim of being like pirates," Baghaei concluded.

The exchange is the latest in a series of public statements between Iranian and US officials. The Iranian spokesman's post did not elaborate on the specific incidents Rubio was referring to, and no further details on the timing or location of the alleged ship attacks were provided in the report.

According to Mehr News Agency, the remarks by Baghaei were published on X and focused on what he described as a contradiction between the US secretary of state's accusation and the US president's earlier comments about seizing commercial vessels and oil cargoes.