Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian delivered a fiery response on Wednesday to his American counterpart’s speech in Riyadh the previous day in which Donald Trump accused Iran’s leaders of mismanagement and destabilizing the Middle East.
Pezeshkian rejected the allegations in sweeping terms, turning the blame on Washington and its allies.
“Did we kill sixty thousand women and children in Gaza within a year, under bombs and missiles? Did we cut off water, bread, and medicine from those poor people? Are we the threat?” he asked in a speech in Kermanshah in western Iran.
Referring to US arms sales to Iran's Arab neighbors, Pezeshkian said, “When they boast of having missiles and bombs beyond imagination, is it us who are causing war and bloodshed—or is it them, who flood this region with weapons and ammunition?”
“You want the countries of this region to turn on each other by handing out bombs and missiles, and then you say you are peace-seekers?” he added.
Soleimani killing
Pezeshkian also reminded Trump that he was the one who ordered the killing of Iran's top military commander Qassem Soleimani in 2020, saying, "Soleimani was the man who stood against ISIS—the same ISIS you trained, supported, and nurtured. And now you claim you defeated them?”
Iranian officialdom had seethed at Trump for years after Soleimani's assassination, and the US Justice Department in November unsealed murder-for-hire charges against an Afghan national it said was tasked by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps with killing Trump.
However, the issue of avenging Soleimani's killing had been somewhat dulled down in recent months amid Trump's renewed campaign of 'maximum pressure' and calls to make a fresh nuclear deal.
“If they martyr our great figures, hundreds more will rise from this land to build this nation," Pezeshkian said.
Responding directly to Trump’s comments about Iran’s internal struggles, Pezeshkian said, “Trump is doing everything he can to sow seeds of division, despair and conflict among the Iranian people. He can only dream of that. All Iranians will stand up for their country with all their might.”
On Iran’s domestic resilience, the president said the Islamic Republic had withstood more than four decades of pressure. “For 47 years, they’ve used all their power to try to bring this system and this people to their knees—and they couldn’t. And they won’t be able to.”
"The kind of pressure they’ve put on Iran—if it had been put on any other country, it wouldn’t have lasted 24 hours.”
His comments came one day after Trump's sharp criticism of Iran's leadership in a lengthy speech in Saudi Arabia.
"Iran's decades of neglect and mismanagement have left the country plagued by rolling blackouts lasting for hours a day ... While your skill has turned dry deserts into fertile farmland, Iran's leaders have managed to turn green farmland into dry deserts as their corrupt water mafia ... causes droughts and empty river beds. They get rich," the US president said.
