India, June 9 -- Iran on Monday quoted legendary English playwright William Shakespeare to slam US treasury secretary Scott Bessent's claim that Washington had seized roughly $1 billion in Tehran's cryptocurrency holdings amid ongoing tensions in West Asia.

Iran's foreign ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei quoted directly from the Bard of Avon's seminal work, Macbeth, to caption a video he shared on the social media platform X, in which Bessent can be seen telling the Reagan National Economic Forum that the US "outright seized" a billion dollars in Iranian Cryptocurrency holdings.

"Now does he feel his title / Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe / Upon a dwarfish thief," Baghaei wrote.

Iran's Press TV said in a report that the ...