Tehran's rage and discontent do not seem to have died down since US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's announcement of its Warsaw conference last month. Iranian officials are busy trying to mitigate the perceived negative impacts of the event widely considered an American push to mobilize the world against the Islamic Republic. 

"The summit is of the same nature as other steps which Tehran construes as US failures in the past 40 years," reported hard-line newspaper Javan Feb. 13, only hours before the conference kicked off in Warsaw. According to the paper, which echoes the views of the country's powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, "Signs of that failure began to emerge weeks before the event, as Russians openly shunned it." The paper delighted in the fact that the United States had to amend the meeting's original stated purpose, broadening the agenda to peace and security in the Middle East rather than exclusively focusing on Iran.

On the diplomatic front, Iran has been trying to change the path of the conference first by summoning Poland's envoy to Tehran in protest. Iran's foreign minister has also used social media to shame Warsaw with an allusion to his country's hospitality for Polish refugees during the World War II. To mend the strained ties, Poland later dispatched its deputy foreign minister to soothe Tehran's anger ignited by the diplomatic row.

Last week, Iran's ambassador to Warsaw spoke of promises by Polish authorities that the conference would not be an anti-Iran platform. But on the day the event opened, the furious rhetoric continued. On its website, Iran's mission in Warsaw slammed US policy in the region as "unconstructive, biased, confused and self-contradictory." Criticizing efforts to exclude Iran, the statement defended the Islamic Republic as a "responsible" and "stabilizing" player in the Middle East. It also painted a gloomy picture for the conference's outcomes, predicting it will further escalate "distrust, chaos, crisis and conflict in the region."