On 40th anniversary of revolution, Iran taunts a ‘declining’ US
- Hard-line cleric Ahmad Jannati mocks leadership of US President Donald Trump
- Jannati opposed President Hassan Rowhani’s decision to negotiate away some of Iran’s nuclear rights
Forty years after its revolution, Iran has no fear of a “declining” America, a senior cleric said on Friday at the start of official commemorations of the uprising that made the country a permanent enemy of the US.
Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, a famously hardline cleric who is the secretary of the Guardian Council, a body with huge influence over the way Iran is run, used his speech to mock the leadership of US President Donald Trump.
“Even many of America’s allies don’t listen to it any more and they are not afraid of it,” Jannati said at the mausoleum of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who returned from exile in France to lead the revolution exactly 40 years ago.
“America cannot manage its own affairs now,” Jannati said in remarks carried by state television, adding that “millions of people are hungry there and America’s power is in decline.” He did not say what he was basing that assertion on.
The 1979 uprising deposed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a secular king allied to the West. Later that year, Iranian students stormed the US embassy and held 52 Americans for 444 days – an affront to US pride that still colours how Iran is viewed from Washington.