Islamic Republic of Iran’s President, Hassan Rouhani has dubbed outgoing US President, Donald Trump as a tyrant, after Trump released a farewell speech hours before Joe Biden takes over as president of the United States.
Rouhani, whose regime with Supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei is one of the most repressive and dictatorial in the Islamic Nation’s history, called on United States President-elect, Joe Biden, to return to the 2015 nuclear deal and lift sanctions imposed on Tehran by Donald Trump’s administration.
Speaking at a televised cabinet meeting Wednesday, January 20, Rouhani said the ball was “in the US court now.”
“If Washington returns to Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal, we will also fully respect our commitments under the pact,” he said, adding in reference to Trump that “a tyrant’s era came to an end and today is the final day of his ominous reign.”
Tensions between the two countries were at an all time high during Trump’s time in office as he castigated the Iran Nuclear deal saying it was a cover up for Iran to develop a nuclear bomb.
Tensions also increased after the US assassinated Iranian general Qasem Soleimani last January using a military drone.
Recently Trump ordered Nuclear capable jets to fly over the Middle East as political observers feared Trump could start a war with Iran by bombing an Iranian nuclear site.
Biden — a member of the Obama administration which negotiated the original Iran Nuclear deal — entering office on Wednesday noon, hopes are high for diplomacy between both countries.
At the meeting Wednesday, Rouhani castigated Trump, saying his four years in office “bore no fruit other than injustice and corruption and causing problems for his own people and the world.”
Under the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the Iranian government agreed to three key things: reducing the number of centrifuges in the country by two-thirds, slashing its stockpile of enriched uranium, and capping ongoing enrichment at 3.67%, an amount sufficient for energy provision but not enough to build a nuclear bomb.
In addition, Iran was required to limit uranium research and development, and allow inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) certain access to its nuclear facilities.
In return for its compliance, all nuclear-related sanctions on Iran were lifted and the economy grew.
But Trump ended the deal in 2018, sending the nation into economic hardship and blocking the Islamic Nation’s ability to conduct business with other nations.
Biden has expressed a desire to return to the 2015 agreement, telling CNN last year that Trump had “recklessly tossed away a policy that was working to keep America safe and replaced it with one that has worsened the threat.”
“I will offer Tehran a credible path back to diplomacy,” the then-candidate wrote in September. “If Iran returns to strict compliance with the nuclear deal, the United States would rejoin the agreement as a starting point for follow-on negotiations.”
