Trump denounces ‘brutal and corrupt’ Iranian regime

AFP: President Donald Trump praised Iranian protesters on Tuesday for acting against Tehran’s “brutal and corrupt” regime after days of bloody unrest, while also lashing out at his predecessor Barack Obama.

“The people of Iran are finally acting against the brutal and corrupt Iranian regime,” Trump tweeted, a day after calling for regime change in the Islamic republic.

“All of the money that President Obama so foolishly gave them went into terrorism and into their ‘pockets.’ The people have little food, big inflation and no human rights. The US is watching!”

The comments were Trump’s latest criticism of, and hint of a possible US withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers – Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States – that was a signature foreign policy achievement of the Obama administration.

Trump has been vocal on Twitter about the protests in Iran since they erupted last week.

On Monday, he said it was “time for change” in Iran and that the country’s people were “hungry” for freedom.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has hit back at Trump’s comments, saying the US leader – whose “whole being is against the nation of Iran – has “no right” to sympathise with protesters.

Protests began in Iran’s second largest city Mashhad and quickly spread to become the biggest challenge to the Islamic regime since mass demonstrations in 2009.

Iranian officials have said online accounts in the United States, Britain and Saudi Arabia are fomenting protests, which Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei blamed on the country’s “enemies.”

Iran says Trump should focus on ‘hungry’ people in US

AFP: Iran’s foreign ministry responded Tuesday to US President Donald Trump’s latest Twitter attack, saying he should focus on “homeless and hungry people” in his own country rather than insulting Iranians.

“Instead of wasting his time sending useless and insulting tweets regarding other countries, he would be better off seeing to the domestic issues of his own country such as daily killings of dozens of people... and the existence of millions of homeless and hungry people,” said ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi.

In his latest tweet on the ongoing unrest in Iran, Trump praised the protesters for acting against Tehran’s “brutal and corrupt” regime. 

“The people have little food, big inflation and no human rights. The US is watching!” Trump wrote.

Ghasemi responded by saying Trump had no support from Iranians after labelling them a “terrorist nation” and “using a false name for the ‘Persian Gulf’”.

He was referring to Trump’s travel ban against Iranians imposed last year, and his use of the term “Arabian Gulf” which angered many Iranians.