President Trump has a “Nazi disposition,” and his decision to reimpose sanctions on Iran amounts to “economic terrorism” that will provoke retaliation from the regime, President Hassan Rouhani warned Thursday.
“No state and nation can be brought to the negotiating table by force,” Rouhani said through a translator at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City. “And if so, what follows is the accumulation [of] the grapes of wrath of those nations to be reaped later by the oppressors.”
Without naming Trump, Rouhani accused him of having “xenophobic tendencies resembling a Nazi disposition” and suggested that Trump’s hostility to “multilateralism” demonstrates the president’s personal lack of intelligence.
Trump exited the 2015 nuclear agreement and renewed U.S. sanctions on Iran, as his national security team believes the economic relief provided by the deal is being used to finance terrorism and military aggression in Syria and Yemen. The withdrawal frustrated European allies who believe the pact defused a nuclear crisis, a split that Rouhani highlighted when denouncing Trump’s threat to implement the federal laws that impose sanctions on countries that do business with Iran.
“Unlawful unilateral sanctions in themselves constitute a form of economic terrorism and a breach of the right of development,” he said. “The economic war that the United States has initiated under the rubric of new sanctions not only targets the Iranian people, but also entails harmful repercussions for the people of other countries, and that war has caused a disruption in the state of global trade.”
The Trump administration is taking a hard line on Iran in New York, denouncing the regime both in the president’s General Assembly address and in speeches at satellite events from other administration officials. The president is also expected to chair a high-level meeting of the United Nations Security Council, which will focus substantially on Iran.
“We’ve put a number of restrictions in place,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters on Monday. “We will re-impose another set of sanctions come this November. Our actions in and around the Middle East have made clear we will not continue to accept Iran’s bad behavior.”
Behind the scenes, Trump reportedly has sought to arrange a meeting with Rouhani, but those invitations were rejected.
“For dialogue to take place, there is no need for a photo opportunity. The two sides can listen to each other right here in this assembly,” Rouhani said. “I am starting the dialogue right here and state in unequivocal terms that the question of international security is not a toy in American domestic politics. The United Nations is not a part of the United States administration.”
“It is a symptom of the weakness of intellect,” Rouhani said. “It betrays an inability in understanding a complex and interconnected world.”
The White House had stern words of its own.
“According to the mullahs in Tehran, we are ‘the Great Satan,’ lord of the underworld, master of the raging inferno,” White House national security adviser John Bolton plans to say at an event hosted by United Against a Nuclear Iran. “So, I might imagine they would take me seriously when I assure them today: If you cross us, our allies, or our partners; if you harm our citizens; if you continue to lie, cheat, and deceive, yes, there will indeed be hell to pay.”
