than implementing his promises" and that Europeans should not criticize him as "we too erect walls in Europe". – Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski defended the ban, stating that every sovereign nation had the right to decide its own immigration policy. He stated that no state had a duty to accept immigrants, adding that Trump was elected president and had the right to impose the ban. Leaders in the Islamic world – Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and the Iran's Ministry of Foreign Affairs characterized Trump's order as insulting to the Islamic world and counter-productive in the attempt to combat extremism. It announced that Iran would take "reciprocal measures in order to safeguard the rights of its citizens". Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was quoted by Fars News Agency on January 31 stating that the government will not issue visas to Americans, except in some cases which will be referred to a new committee set up at the Foreign Ministry.Akbar Ranjbarzadeh, an MP from the Principalist faction noted that as a government, they "had promised to bring back honor to the Iranian passport, not only has that not happened but America is treating Iranians as a colonized nation".In a reciprocal measure carried out on February 3, the Iranian government initially banned American wrestlers from participating in 2017 Wrestling World Cup - Men's freestyle. The ban was however revoked a short time later as an American court put travel restrictions of Trump's executive order on hold. Seventy-two professors of the Sharif University of Technology asked the Iranian government in a letter to respond to the Trump ban by passing a law facilitating the entry of the United States citizens to Iran and allowing their entrance simply via the Iranian Airport Visa within the coming ninety days, so that they would "experience the hospitality and peacefulness of the Iranian nation firsthand". – On February 1, the United Arab Emirates became the first Muslim-majority nation to back the order. Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan said that most of the world's Muslim-majority nations were not covered by the order, which he characterized as temporary and a "sovereign decision" of the United States. – On February 16, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has expressed support to President Trump's executive order. During his interview with French media outlets, he explained "that the executive order isn't against the Syrian people, but it's against the terrorists