President Donald Trump issued stricter sanctions on Iran on Monday, hitting the Supreme Leaders Office after Iran shot down an unmanned US drone last week.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani lashed out at the new sanctions on Tuesday. He claimed that the sanctions mean Trump is “lying” about wanting to hold negotiation talks with the regime and that he has poisoned the White House with his “mental illness.”
From The Washington Post:
In a searing televised address, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani called restrictions against Iran’s supreme leader “outrageous and idiotic” and said they showed “certain failure” on the part of the Trump administration to isolate Iran.“You call for negotiations. If you are telling the truth, why are you simultaneously seeking to sanction our foreign minister?” Rouhani said Tuesday, referring to remarks by U.S. officials suggesting plans to sanction Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif later this month.Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Twitter that the “useless sanctioning” of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Zarif, who led Iran’s nuclear negotiations with world powers, “means the permanent closure of the doors of diplomacy.”“Trump’s government is annihilating all of the established international mechanisms for maintaining world peace and security,” said the spokesman, Abbas Mousavi.
Mousavi tweeted that the new sanctions have closed “the path of diplomacy with the desperate government of the United States.”
Rouhani also stated that a “government with an iota of wisdom and prudence cannot impose sanctions against the most senior authority of a country.”
Uh, yes, we can. Rouhani thinks the sanctions mean Trump is lying about wanting talks, but he forgot to mention that Iran has put no effort into making the discussions happen.
National Security Advisor John Bolton insisted that the US has “held the door open to real negotiations,” but described Iran’s silence as “deafening.”
WaPo continued:
Bolton spoke at a trilateral summit of U.S., Israeli and Russian national security advisers in Jerusalem — the first of its kind.After a meeting with his counterparts, Bolton told reporters that the U.S. pressure campaign would force Iran to engage in new nuclear negotiations, Reuters news agency reported.“They’ll either get the point or . . . we will simply enhance the maximum-pressure campaign further,” Bolton said. He predicted that “the combination of sanctions and other pressure” would “bring Iran to the table.”
Honestly, I do not think anything will bring Iran to the table. I prefer sanctions over war, but it seems like the sanctions only hurt regular Iranians and not the regime. While Iranians complain about Trump, many have blamed their government. From the Associated Press:
Many blame U.S. President Donald Trump and his maximalist policy on Iran, which has seen him pull out of Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers and levy punishing U.S. sanctions on the country.But alongside Trump, many Iranians blame their own government, which has careened from one economic disaster to another since its Islamic Revolution 40 years ago.“The economic war is a reality and people are under extreme pressure,” said Shiva Keshavarz, a 22-year-old accountant soon to be married.She said government leaders “keep telling us to be strong and endure the pressures, but we can already hear the sound of our bones breaking.”
Rouhani and the regime will not back down. I mean, they will not even go to the table with the Trump administration. Over course, they did with President Barack Obama’s administration because those officials bent over backward to accommodate the regime.
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