Iran witnessing ‘scandalous and shameful’ end of Trump: Rouhani

January 13, 2021 - 20:12

TEHRAN – Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said on Wednesday that the U.S. “maximum pressure campaign” against Iran ended in failure and described Donald Trump’s record in the final days of his presidency as “scandalous and shameful” which Iran is witnessing.

“These days do not just mark the end of an administration, but they also mark the failure of a policy that is the policy of maximum pressure against the great nation of Iran. Today is the day of failure of the policy of economic terrorism with which they (Americans) sought to destroy the people’s lives,” Rouhani said in a cabinet session on Wednesday morning.

He was referring to the policy adopted by the Trump administration after the U.S. president withdrew the U.S. from the 2015 nuclear deal on May 8, 2018.

U.S. President Donald Trump imposed sweeping economic sanctions on Iran in an apparent bid to replace the nuclear deal - officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) - with what Trump called a “better deal” with Iran, one that would include, among other things, extending the original deal’s sunset clauses, curbing Iran’s ballistic missile program and imposing limits on its influence in the West Asia region.

With Trump’s election loss, this policy is coming to an end, according to Rouhani, who compared Trump’s “downfall” to that of Iran’s last shah, who fled Iran during the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Rouhani said the Shah’s escape from Iran marked the end of despotism. “And today, we are witnessing a rarely seen phenomenon of the downfall of another despot in America,” the Iranian president pointed out.

He added that Iran witnesses “the scandalous and shameful” end of the Trump administration. And this end “showed that bullying, racism and violating the law will not end well,” Rouhani continued.

Rouhani also described Trump as a “big terrorist,” who wanted to topple the Iranian government in three months.

“Over the last three years, our dear and patient people resisted in the face of this big terrorist. They (Americans) wanted to overturn the establishment in a period of three months, but they were toppled scandalously,” Rouhani asserted, according to state news agency IRNA.

The president noted that Trump was a president who lacked “political apprehension” and was flanked by a “stupid” secretary of state and an “extremist, ignorant” national security advisor.

“He himself pressed ahead with his businessman-style way of thinking and gambling, and we saw how he ended,” Rouhani said of Trump.

Rouhani pointed out that while the Iranian people emerge victorious in the face of U.S. pressures and terrorism the American people face a huge gap inside of America and witness a huge debacle in their social and political lives.