Iranians to respond to Trump on upcoming anniv. of Islamic Revolution: Leader

Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei says the Iranian people will be responding to US President Donald Trump’s recent anti-Iran threats on the upcoming anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

“Trump says, ‘Fear me!’ No. The [Iranian] people will respond to these remarks on Bahman 22 and will show what position the Iranian people assume vis-à-vis threats,” the Leader said on Tuesday.

Ayatollah Khamenei was referring to the date on the Persian calendar coinciding with the anniversary of the February 11, 1979 Islamic Revolution, when the Iranian nation staged countrywide rallies celebrating the Revolution’s victory.

Trump tweeted earlier this month that “Iran is playing with fire - they don’t appreciate how ‘kind’ President Obama was to them. Not me!”

“Iranians are not afraid of threats,” Ayatollah Khamenei said.

The Leader said, “The new US president says, ‘You should be grateful to [former US President Barack] Obama! Why? Should we be thankful for the creation of Daesh, the flames [of violence] in Iraq and Syria, and open support for the 2009 sedition [in Iran]?”

“It was him (Obama) who brought the crippling sanctions to the Iranian people,” Ayatollah Khamenei said. “Of course he fell short of his goal, and no enemy can cripple the Iranian people.”

“These are the examples of the very velvet gloves that the previous US administration had pulled over its iron claw,” the Leader said.

The Leader said Trump had to be thanked because “he did the job for us of showing the US’s true face.”

“During the [US] election and after it, this gentleman (Trump) came along and laid bare the political, economic, moral, and social corruption within the US establishment that we had been speaking of for thirty-odd years,” Ayatollah Khamenei said.

“Now, too, with what he’s been doing, hand-cuffing a five-year-old [and other things], he is showing what American human rights really mean,” the Leader said.

After taking office, the new US president ordered sweeping travel bans against many Muslim countries, including the Islamic Republic. The order was followed by widespread domestic and international backlash amid scenes of American security forces overpowering minors to enforce the bans.

Ayatollah Khamenei made the remarks in a meeting with a number of commanders, officers, pilots, and staff members from Iran’s Air Force and the country’s Khatam al-Anbiya Air Defense Base.

The meeting took place on the anniversary of a historical development before the 1979 Revolution that saw Homafaran, air force officers in the monarchical Pahlavi regime, meeting with and pledging allegiance to Imam Khomeni, the founder of the Islamic Republic.

In his Tuesday remarks, the Leader said, “During the time of the tyrannical [monarchical] regime, the Air Force was one of the closest sections to the US-tied political system. But the regime received the most vehement blow from this very section, something it would have never thought of.”