US President Donald Trump’s refusal to certify the Iran nuclear deal has sparked a new war of words between the Islamic Republic and the US, fuelling growing mistrust and a sense of nationalism among Iranians, the Associated Press reports.
The speech has served to unite Iranians across the political spectrum - fed also by anger over Trump’s refusal to refer to the Persian Gulf, the waterway through which a third of all oil traded by sea passes, by name.
The reaction is undercutting those trying to change Iran’s clerically overseen government from within, and likely will strengthen the hand of hard-liners who long have insisted the US remains the same “Great Satan” denounced in the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
“Under the deal, it was supposed to be that we get concessions, not that we give more concessions,” the hard-line newspaper Kayhan raged.
Iranian officials and media outlets on Saturday uniformly condemned Trump for accusing Iran of violating the spirit of the 2015 accord and calling on Congress to toughen the law governing US participation. Trump said he was not ready to pull out of the deal but warned he would do so if it were not improved.
In a televised speech shortly after Trump made his announcement, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said his country would remain in the deal, but criticised Trump’s words, referring to them as “cursing and futile accusations.”
Rouhani also said Iran would continue to build and test ballistic missiles, something allowed under the nuclear deal though the US believe it violates the accord’s spirit.
“We have always been determined, and today we are more determined,” Rouhani said. “We will double our efforts from now on.”
The Iranian president also offered a list of moments that showed the US could not be trusted by the average Iranian, dating back to the 1953 CIA-backed coup that cemented US-backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s power.
Like many others in Iran, Rouhani focused on the fact that Trump used the term “Arabian Gulf” to refer to the Persian Gulf. Some traded online video clips of past American presidents calling it the Persian Gulf, while one semi-official news agency published a photo gallery with the title “Persian Gulf forever.”
The name of the body of water has become an emotive issue for Iranians who embrace their country’s long history as the Persian Empire, especially as US Gulf Arab allies and the US military now call it the “Arabian Gulf.” Rouhani even suggested during his speech that Trump needed to “study geography.”
Recent surveys have said an increasing majority of Iranians are sceptical that the US will live up to its obligations in the nuclear deal. Meanwhile, most have yet to see the benefits of the deal itself as Iran’s economy still struggles to overcome rampant inflation, few jobs and bad loans to its banks.
