TEHRAN – The Iranian president on Wednesday made sweeping rejection of his American counterpart as a fit person for politics, criticizing Donald Trump for his attempt to sabotage the UN-endorsed nuclear deal.

“You are just a businessman, a tradesman. You are a tower builder,” Hassan Rouhani said, addressing Trump. “How is he going to pass judgment on international issues?”

“The nuclear deal is the nuclear deal,” said Rouhani in response to comments by both U.S. President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron at the White House a day earlier in which Macron suggested that changes could be made to (or alongside) the multilateral nuclear agreement in order to save it from sabotage by the Trump administration.

Rouhani said that he spoke with Macron at length, presumably before Tuesday's events in Washington, D.C., and told the French president “explicitly that we will not add anything to the deal or remove anything from it, even one sentence.”

Rouhani further referred to statements by Trump who said Tuesday that some “immensely wealthy” countries in the Middle East have to pay for American protection and deploy their own troops in Syria.

“You say if you pay us money, we will stay in Syria, and if you do not, we will leave. This shows you are hirelings. You say if we are not here, you will cease to exist in a matter of a week. Why would they? We are protecting Iraq. The Iraqi nation is protecting Iraq. We are prepared to protect Saudi Arabia. The Saudi nation is protecting Saudi Arabia. By the way, if you care to leave forever, security will be totally restored to the region,” he added.

SP/PA