Trump ‘disgraced’ US prestige with Iran sanctions, Khamenei says
In this picture released by an official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks at a meeting in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, April 14, 2018. (AP Photo)
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Saturday that President Donald Trump has “disgraced” U.S. prestige and would be the ultimate loser from renewing sanctions on the Islamic republic.
“This new U.S. president… has disgraced the remnant of America’s prestige and that of liberal democracy. America’s hard power, that is to say their economic and military power, is declining too,” he said on his Persian Twitter account, quoting a speech in Tehran.
Separately, Khamenei said the U.S. had failed to reassert its domination of Iran since the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution that toppled the U.S.-backed Shah, according to state television.
“America’s goal has been to re-establish the domination it had (before 1979) but it has failed. America has been defeated by the Islamic Republic over the past 40 years,” it quoted Khamenei as saying in a meeting with thousands of students.
Washington will on Monday reimpose far-reaching sanctions on Iran’s vital oil export and banking sectors to try to force the Islamic Republic to curb its missile and regional activities and accept tougher restraints on its nuclear program.
Trump denounced the nuclear deal, signed before he took office, as flawed in Iran’s favor and withdrew Washington from the pact in May.
Meanwhile, Iranian state television reported that the Islamic Republic had started production of the locally-designed Kowsar fighter plane for use in its air force.