Calling Trump a terrorist, Rouhani praised the president’s coming departure.
By David Isaac, World Israel News
Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said he was happy that President Donald Trump, whom he labeled a “terrorist,” had lost the election during a speech to the Iranian cabinet on Wednesday.
However, he wouldn’t say he was pleased about Trump’s successor either. “Some of you are excited about Biden’s entry into the White House. No, I’m not happy,” Rouhani said.
“The new administration in Washington knows the limits of its power. They know that the right path is open to them, but also the wrong path is open to them. I hope the message of the American people is absorbed by the administration, the message is obedience to international law,” the president said.
Biden has said he wants to return to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, which was negotiated when he was vice president in the Obama administration and which Trump pulled out of in 2018.
“The Iran Deal was one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into,” Trump said at the time. His administration reimposed sanctions on Iran.
Rouhani claimed in his Wednesday speech that “Iran is much stronger today than it was in 2015. There is no room for comparison between Iran then and now, neither in terms of economic infrastructure nor in terms of military strength.”
His comments fly in the face of reports that Iran’s economy is in freefall due to the sanctions, which even Iran has admitted have hit the country hard. Its main source of income – oil – has dried up and the rial has dropped to the lowest value ever against the dollar. Protesters took to the streets in Nov. 2019 when the government announced a 50% increase in gas prices.
Iran is likely to see its economy improve as Biden charts a different course, one more in line with that of the Obama administration. Indeed, some have called Biden’s first term the “third Obama administration,” something Biden denies despite the large number of former Obama appointees joining his team.
However, officially Iran refuses to acknowledge their good fortune in Trump’s loss.
In an interview on Wednesday with Russian news outlet RT, Zeinab Soleimani, the daughter of Lieut.-Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a targeted attack by the Trump administration, stuck to the official line.
“There’s no difference between Biden and Trump, they are the same guy. They are following the same policy, there’s no difference between them. Trump ordered the killing of my father, but Biden supported that, so there’s no difference.”
Soleimani was killed for orchestrating proxy terror groups against Israel and other Western targets and their allies throughout the Middle East.