The Iranian and US presidents have traded insults, with Hassan Rouhani suggesting that Donald Trump suffered from a “mental disorder” and Trump once more threatening Iran with “obliteration”.
The very personal exchange was reminiscent of similar verbal clashes between the US and North Korean leaders in late 2017, and underlined the volatility of US foreign policymaking in the present standoff in the Gulf. Trump has swung between dire threats and offers of talks without preconditions, while ramping up sanctions.
The worsening confrontation became significantly more personal this week when the US imposed sanctions on Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and eight military commanders, and threatened measures against the foreign minister, Javad Zarif.
On Tuesday, Rouhani responded by describing the US president as “afflicted by a mental disorder” and said the sanctions against Khamenei were “outrageous and idiotic” – especially as the 80-year-old cleric has no overseas assets and no plans to ever travel to the US.
The insult was an echo of Kim Jong-un’s broadside against the US president in September 2017, when he called Trump a “mentally deranged US dotard”. The slanging match between Trump and Kim ultimately gave way to summitry and claims of mutual affection (with Trump even claiming they “fell in love”). The path to a diplomatic breakthrough with Iran, however, looks far more complicated.
As it has frequently in the past, the reference to Trump’s mental faculties triggered an emotional response, and a flurry of tweets.
“Iran leadership doesn’t understand the words ‘nice’ or ‘compassion,’ they never have. Sadly, the thing they do understand is Strength and Power, and the USA is by far the most powerful Military Force in the world, with 1.5 Trillion Dollars invested over the last two years alone,” he wrote.
“The U.S. has not forgotten Iran’s use of IED’s & EFP’s (bombs), which killed 2000 Americans, and wounded many more … Any attack by Iran on anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force. In some areas, overwhelming will mean obliteration.”
Trump’s estimate of US fatalities is much higher than the Pentagon estimate of 600.
Iran has been adamant it will not be pressured into concessions and will not negotiate with the US under the current oil, banking and trade embargo.
The Trump administration has accompanied the buildup of economic pressure with offers to talk. In recent days, Trump has said that offer is without preconditions. However, there have been mixed messages over what any talks would be about. State department officials have insisted a wide-ranging list of 12 US demands, including withdrawal from Syria and cutting support to Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, would have to be met for sanctions to be lifted.
Trump has repeatedly suggested that his sole concern is that Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon. Zarif on Tuesday restated Iran’s insistence that it would never pursue a nuclear weapon, saying Islam prevented the country from doing so.
Iran has previously said it is ideologically and religiously opposed to acquiring nuclear weapons and seeks nuclear power only for civilian purposes. But in the current unpredictable climate it is possible Trump could pick up Zarif’s remarks as a signal to talk.
Tehran has warned that on Thursday it will breach the limits on its stockpile of low-enriched uranium set out in the 2015 nuclear deal. Without sanctions relief, it will take a further – potentially more significant – step on 8 July of raising the level at which it enriches uranium, above the 3.67% agreed in 2015.
Q&AWhat is the Iran nuclear deal?
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In July 2015, Iran and a six-nation negotiating group reached a landmark agreement known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that ended a 12-year deadlock over Tehran’s nuclear programme. The deal, struck in Vienna after nearly two years of intensive talks, limited the Iranian programme, to reassure the rest of the world that it cannot develop nuclear weapons, in return for sanctions relief.
At its core, the JCPOA is a straightforward bargain: Iran’s acceptance of strict limits on its nuclear programme in return for an escape from the sanctions that grew up around its economy over a decade prior to the accord. Under the deal, Iran unplugged two-thirds of its centrifuges, shipped out 98% of its enriched uranium and filled its plutonium production reactor with concrete. Tehran also accepted extensive monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has verified 10 times since the agreement, and as recently as February, that Tehran has complied with its terms. In return, all nuclear-related sanctions were lifted in January 2016, reconnecting Iran to global markets.
The six major powers involved in the nuclear talks with Iran were in a group known as the P5+1: the UN security council’s five permanent members – China, France, Russia, the UK and the US – and Germany. The nuclear deal is also enshrined in a UN security council resolution that incorporated it into international law. The 15 members of the council at the time unanimously endorsed the agreement.
On 8 May 2018, US president Donald Trump pulled his country out of the deal. Iran announced its partial withdrawal from the nuclear deal a year later. Trump's successor, Joe Biden, has said that the US could return to the deal if Iran fulfilled its obligations.
Saeed Kamali Dehghan, Iran correspondent
With those potential flashpoints looming, France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, spoke to Rouhani by telephone on Tuesday. Macron and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, are expected to try to defuse tensions when they see Trump at the G20 summit in Osaka on Friday.
Tehran said the US had spent weeks demanding that Iran match America’s diplomacy, but was now trying to immobilise its chief diplomat, by sanctioning Zarif.
“Imposing useless sanctions on Iran’s supreme leader and the commander of Iran’s diplomacy is the permanent closure of the path of diplomacy,” the foreign ministry spokesman, Abbas Mousavi, said in a tweet on Tuesday. “Trump’s desperate administration is destroying the established international mechanisms for maintaining world peace and security.”
Speaking in Israel, Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, insisted the president remained open to real negotiations and “all that Iran needs to do is walk through that open door”.
Iran’s decision to breach the nuclear deal places the EU in a dilemma: France, Germany and the UK are desperate to keep the deal alive but cannot find a route to de-escalate the crisis between Tehran and Washington.
The three European countries issued a statement on the margins of the UN security council on Monday urging Iran to stay inside the deal.
They also insisted they were working hard to implement their commitments to Iran – a reference to setting up financial mechanisms to help Tehran trade with Europe without the threat of US sanctions – and condemned recent attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman.
The UK foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, warned Iran not to breach the uranium enrichment limits, saying in the Commons: “It is absolutely essential they stick to that deal in its entirety for it to preserve and for us to have a nuclear-free Middle East.”
He also ruled out British involvement in military action. “The US is our closest ally. We talk to them the whole time but I cannot envisage any situation where they request, or we agree to, any moves to go to war.”
Analysts said the impact of the fresh US sanctions on an already heavily sanctioned country would be limited. “The newly announced Iran sanctions are symbolic,” said Jarrett Blanc, a former senior state department official now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The ratcheting up of tensions between the two countries comes in the wake of the Gulf of Oman tanker attacks, when two vessels were damaged by explosions. The Trump administration blamed Iran for the attacks, but Tehran denied responsibility.