DUBAI (Reuters) — Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Tuesday dismissed the US decision to put Iran “on notice” over its missile tests and called President Donald Trump the “real face” of American corruption.
In his first speech since Trump’s inauguration, Iran’s supreme leader called Iranians to take part in demonstrations on Friday, the anniversary of Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, to show they were not frightened of American “threats”.
“We are thankful to (Trump) for making our life easy as he showed the real face of America,” Khamenei told a meeting of military commanders in Tehran, according to his website.
Trump responded to a Jan 29 Iranian missile test by saying “Iran is playing with fire” and imposed fresh sanctions on individuals and entities, some of them linked to Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards.
The White House said the missile test was not a direct breach of Iran’s 2015 nuclear pact with six world powers, but that it “violates the spirit of that”..
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Tehran would not renegotiate the nuclear deal that Trump consistently criticized as being a gift to the Islamic Republic.
