Tehran, Iran – Iran’s political and military leaders are turning their fingers at Donald Trump after the US president slashed rhetoric on his first major tour of the Middle East.
In a speech to a group of teachers gathered for the state ceremony in Tehran on Saturday, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said some of Trump’s comments were not even worth responding.
“The level of those statements is so low that it is dishonorable to the person they spoke to them and dishonorable to the American nation,” he said.
Khamenei added that when Washington said he wanted to use his power towards peace as he supports “genocide” Palestinians and others throughout the region, Trump “lied.” He called Israel “a dangerous cancer tumor” “which must be uprooted.”
Meanwhile, Iranian President Masuud Pezeshkian told a gathering of naval officers on Saturday that Trump was supporting Israel’s “genocide” in the Gaza Strip, threatening destruction and extending a message of peace.
“Which of the President’s words should we believe? His message of peace, or his message of human massacre?” The Iranian president said he pointed out that Trump has approved the International Criminal Court (ICC) in a move that has been criticised internationally.
The statement comes after Trump praised the Arab leaders adjacent to Iran and blasted leadership in Tehran after signing large deals with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates after using his Middle East tour.
The US president told Arab leaders that after replacing the monarchy in the 1979 revolution, he was developing infrastructure while “landmarks have collapsed into tile rubs” in Iran.
He noted that Iranian leaders “were able to turn green farmland into a dry desert” as a result of corruption and mismanagement, and that Iranians have experienced several hours of power losses a day.
The blackouts, which are the result of a long-standing energy crisis that has hurt Iran’s already tense economy, are expected to remain for the rest of the year, according to Iran’s officials.
On Saturday, the largest association of Iran’s mining, steel and cement industries wrote a joint letter to Peshshkian, demanding that he urgently review the 90% power usage limit imposed on important sectors.
Trump, who welcomed Syrian interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa and lifted sanctions in Damascus, also targeted Iran’s regional policies.
He described Tehran’s support for the collapsed establishment of President Bashar al-Assad as “mortality and death” and the cause of regional instability.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Aragci described the US president’s remarks as “deceitful” and told state media on Friday it was the US that supported Israel and hampered Iran through sanctions and military threats while attacking Syria.
Congressional Mohammad Bagh Gallibahu, who worked on organising the Islamic Cooperation Organization (OIC) conference in Indonesia, said Trump’s remarks showed he was “living in delusions.”
Hossein Salami, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), spoke directly to Trump on Friday, saying that despite Iran’s beautiful landmarks, “we take pride in the character, identity, culture and promotion of Islam.”
The sharp rhetoric in response to Trump’s latest controversial comments comes just days after he teases him that he may soon start calling the “Persian Gulf” the “Arabian Gulf.”
This has angered Iranians all over the board and prompted criticism of the average citizens, authorities, local media and even some Iranians, who advocate for US sanctions and a change of government, foreign pro-sump, as well as some of the Iranians, for their attempts to rename major waterways.
Skepticism over Iran and US dealings
Both Iran and the US say they prefer an agreement that will help quickly lift tensions over Iran’s nuclear program despite the latest war of words.
However, after four rounds of negotiations mediated by Oman, a positive deal to lift sanctions to ensure Iran does not have a nuclear bomb still appears to face a major hurdle.
Trump said Tehran was handed a proposal to move forward quickly towards a deal, but Iranian Araguchi said on Friday that no proposal has been created, written in rhetoric that “contradicts the confusion and the like” from Washington.
“Mark my words: Iran has no scenario to abandon its rich, rich rights for peaceful purposes. Rights that are also given to all other NPT signatories,” he wrote in X’s post in connection with the Treaty of Delinquents.
Senior nuclear negotiator Kazem Galibabadi declined to report on Friday by a Western media outlet that Iran may agree to a complete halt of uranium enrichment for the remaining Trump presidency in order to build trust.
“The right to enrich is our absolute red line! Stopping to enrichment is unacceptable.”
In 2018, Trump unilaterally withdrew from a groundbreaking nuclear deal signed between Iran and the world power three years ago, imposing the toughest US sanctions that escalated during the latest negotiations.
Nuclear trade sets an enrichment rate of 3.67% in first-generation centrifuges for civilian use in Iran in exchange for UN sanctions. Iran is currently enriching up to 60% and has enough fissile material for multiple bombs, but has yet to make efforts to build it.