TEHRAN — President Hassan Rouhani has said if the people want to swear at someone for the shortcomings and problems, such anger should be directed at the White House.

“If people want to curse and swear for the shortcomings and problems, the curse and swear should be addressed toward the White House in Washington,” Rouhani said on Saturday morning.

He said no one should give the wrong address to the people in order to fulfill their group’s interests.

“The right address for all the crimes and pressure on the dear Iranian people is in the White House, and those who are in that building have committed all these atrocities against the Iranian nation,” he added.

The president also praised the Iranian people for resisting against the U.S. pressure and bullying, saying people should have been able to live better in the past few years but they have faced many problems because of the White House’s crimes.

President Donald Trump has withdrawn the United States from the internationally-endorsed Iran nuclear deal and pursued a “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran.

Earlier, the Trump administration announced a move to trigger the snapback of all UN sanctions on Iran after failing to get the UN Security Council to pass a resolution aiming to indefinitely extend an arms embargo on the country.

All other parties to the nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), have strongly rejected Washington’s unilateral moves.

Indignant over rejection of UN sanctions by 13 members of the Security Council, the U.S. immediately imposed more of its own sanctions against Iran on Monday.

“Our maximum economic pressure campaign remains but remember, President Trump has said that he wants a peaceful resolution with Iran and he has said that he’s willing to negotiate for a new and better deal,” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus told CNBC’s Hadley Gamble on Wednesday.

“So peace and diplomacy remains on the table anytime the regime and Iran would like to take us up on it,” Ortagus added.

 ‘We have never seen such savage people in White House’

Iran has condemned Washington’s pressure as “economic and medical terrorism”, directly targeting the Iranian people’s livelihood and health, especially since the outbreak of the coronavirus which inflicted a huge loss of life and resources on Iran.

“With wrong, illegal and inappropriate sanctions and terrorist operations, they (Americans) prevented medicine and healthcare and food to reach Iran,” Rouhani stated.

“We’ve never seen such savage people in the White House throughout history,” he said. “They committed the greatest act of savagery.”

The president referred to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as “secretary of crimes”, quoting Pompeo as saying proudly that the U.S. has blocked $70 billion of Iran’s resources and prevented a $5-billion IMF loan to Iran, which would have been spent on medicine and healthcare.

On Thursday, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif urged the international community to confront the U.S.’s “economic and medical terrorism.”

“We need to jointly confront the destructive impact of unilateral coercive measures on efforts to combat the pandemic,” Zarif told the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA) hosted by Kazakhstan.

“They are nothing but economic and medical terrorism, and we must refuse to comply with these unlawful measures in our collective endeavor to tackle this common affliction of humanity,” he added.

MH/PA