Good point! However, you bring in a common misconception I'm fighting with within my company for a long time. Python is not an interpreted language. There is no such thing as an "interpreted language", a language is just a set or rules and keywords. Everything you can fit into Backus–Naur form is already a language even if it doesn't have any implementation nor compiler neither interpreter.
Just as a piece of evidence, there are interpreted C++ (http://www.artificialworlds.net/wiki/IGCC/IGCC) and AOT Python (https://github.com/exaloop/codon) implementations.