Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani sneered at U.S. President Trump and his White House team on Tuesday, saying they are “afflicted by mental retardation.”
The comments by Rouhani came in a live television address and followed the Trump administration’s launching of sanctions against Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and a host of other leaders in the Islamic Republic, AP reports.
Rouhani said the decision meant the “certain failure” of the White House’s efforts. He also criticized U.S. officials for wanting to sanction Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
A baffled Rouhani said: “You sanction the foreign minister simultaneously with a request for talks? The White House is afflicted by mental retardation and does not know what to do.”
There was no immediate reaction from Washington early on Tuesday to the personal attack from Iran.
This is not the first time the Iran leadership has launched a smear on Donald Trump.
In 2017, Ali Khamenei called Trump “foul-mouthed”, uttering “nonsense,” and “suffering from retardation”.
“The President of the United States displays nonsense; however, this should not lead us to ignore the mischief of the U.S. regime,” Khamenei told a group of students, before taking to Twitter to expand his range of insults further.
I don’t want to waste time on answering the rants and whoppers of the brute US president. It’s a waste of time for anyone to answer him.
— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) October 18, 2017
The latest round of anti-Trump abuse comes after the president signed an executive order imposing economic sanctions on Monday, taking a dramatic and unprecedented step to increase pressure on Iran after Tehran’s downing of an American drone last week.
“We do not seek conflict with Iran or any other country,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office at the signing ceremony. “I can only tell you we cannot ever let Iran have a nuclear weapon.”
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