A slew of Iranian diplomats mocked US President Donald Trump on Friday after he warned the country would be bombed “ back to the Stone Age,” pointing to the country’s ancient and enduring civilization.

Former Iranian foreign minister, Javad Zarif, lambasted the “arrogant, ignorant descendants” of ancient Europeans, in an apparent reference to Trump.

“Iran stood at the heart of the cradle of civilization while your ancestors in Europe (as the US wasn’t even on the map) were still in the Stone Age – painting faces and swinging clubs,” Zarif posted on X. “We taught order, law and statecraft. Pity none of it reached some arrogant, ignorant descendants.”

Earlier, the Iranian embassy in South Africa posted, “When you were still in caves searching for sure, we were inscribing human rights on the Cyrus Cylinder,” referring to the 2,600-year-old artifact chronicling how the Persian king Cyrus captured the city of Babylon in 539 B.C.

Iran’s mission to the UN said Iranian civilization “spans more than 7,000 years, whereas the US is scarcely 250 years old.”

Over recent days, Trump has invoked increasingly violent language to describe US-Israeli military strikes on Iran. On Wednesday, he threatened to bomb the country “back to the Stone Age.” A day later, the US president warned there would be “much more to follow” if Tehran does not agree to halt retaliatory strikes in the region. Rights advocates and analysts have slammed that rhetoric as “racist” and “dehumanizing.”

“Saying tonight that Iranians should be bombed ‘back to the Stone Age where they belong’ is anti-Muslim, racist, and dehumanizing, and targeting civilian infrastructure is a war crime,” the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy group in the US, said in a statement.

Source: CNN