Iran’s supreme leader Wednesday launched a broadside at Washington’s rejection of a nuclear accord with Tehran, saying the U.S. pullout showed the Islamic Republic could not deal with a country that did not abide by its commitments.
In his first public remarks since U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo demanded Iran make sweeping policy changes, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei expressed revulsion at what he suggested was the casual and boastful way the Trump administration had abandoned the accord.
“The Islamic Republic cannot deal with a government that easily violates an international treaty, withdraws its signature and in a theatrical show brags about its withdrawal on television,” he said in parts of his remarks posted on his official website.
Listing his experiences of U.S. government behavior toward Tehran over the decades, Khamenei said: “The first experience is that the Islamic Republic cannot deal with America. Why? Because America is not loyal to its commitments.”
“Iran was committed to the deal. They [the Americans] have no excuse. [The] International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly verified Iran’s commitment. But you see they [Americans] easily cancel this international agreement.”
“The current U.S. president will meet the same fate as his predecessors … and will vanish from history,” he said, referring to President Donald Trump.
Khamenei did not directly address remarks made by Pompeo Monday that threatened Iran with “the strongest sanctions in history” if it did not curb regional activities such as support for armed groups in countries like Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. Pompeo spoke two weeks after Trump pulled out of the nuclear deal that had lifted sanctions on Iran in exchange for curbs to its nuclear program.
European powers see the accord as the best chance of stopping Tehran acquiring a nuclear weapon.
Turning to other Western powers, Khamenei said Iran did not want to start a fight with Europe but experience had shown France, Germany and Britain followed their ally Washington on the “most sensitive issues.”
France, one of several European powers dismayed by the U.S. withdrawal from a 2015 nuclear accord, said Washington’s method of adding more sanctions on Tehran would reinforce the country’s dominant hard-liners.
And German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton that Europe remained “very, very united” in supporting the deal because it feared a proliferation of atomic weapons on its doorstep.