Iran’s president says his nation will not be intimidated by threats as Trump accuses Tehran of carrying out proxy wars.
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said his country would not “bow to any bully” in response to United States President Donald Trump’s criticism of Tehran during his ongoing three-day Gulf tour.
“He [Trump] thinks he can come here, chant slogans, and scare us. For us, martyrdom is far sweeter than dying in bed. You came to frighten us? We will not bow to any bully,” he said on Wednesday in comments broadcast live on state TV.
Earlier in the day, during the GCC summit in Riyadh, Trump said that while he wanted to make a deal with Iran, the country “must stop sponsoring terror, halt its bloody proxy wars, and permanently and verifiably cease its pursuit of nuclear weapons”.
Washington and Tehran have held four meetings that were mediated by Oman to help reach a deal over the latter’s nuclear programme.
While attending a state dinner in the Qatari capital in Doha on Wednesday, Trump repeated his publicly stated desire for a peaceful resolution to Iran’s nuclear programme and suggested the ball is in Tehran’s court.
“It’s a perilous situation, and we want to do the right thing,” Trump said. “We want to do something that’s going to save maybe millions of lives. Because things like that get started, and they get out of control.”
On Tuesday, Trump said that he wanted “to make a deal with Iran”, but “if Iran’s leadership rejects this olive branch … we will have no choice but to inflict massive maximum pressure”. He added that he would not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.
Successive US administrations have sought to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. A sustained effort by world powers during the Barack Obama administration culminated in a 2015 agreement called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
But when Trump succeeded Obama as US president, he unilaterally withdrew the US from the nuclear agreement in 2018, causing the deal to crumble.
Despite ongoing talks, the Trump administration has continued to impose sanctions on Iran.
On Wednesday, the US issued sanctions targeting Iran for efforts to domestically manufacture components for ballistic missiles, the US Department of the Treasury said.
The sanctions target six individuals and 12 entities for what the Treasury Department said was “their involvement in efforts to help the Iranian regime domestically source the manufacturing of critical materials needed for Tehran’s ballistic missile program”.