Iranian president Rouhani condemns 'ignorant, absurd, hateful' Trump speech

Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, has said his country would respond “decisively and resolutely” if the US walks away from the nuclear deal agreed with other countries in 2015.

Rouhani said that Iran would feel it had a “free hand” if the US broke the agreement by re-imposing sanctions. He said one of the options would be an expansion of work on uranium enrichment, strictly limited under the agreement, but he insisted that Iran would never seek to build nuclear warheads.

The Iranian president said that his country’s response would be heavily influenced by the manner in which European states reacted to US abrogation of the accord.

Rouhani was speaking at the UN general assembly a day after a speech by Donald Trump, in which the US president repeated his denunciations of the deal signed by Barack Obama as the “worst ever”, and encouraged Iranians to overthrow their government.

The Iranian president described Trump’s speech – in which he also threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea – as “ignorant, absurd and hateful rhetoric” that was “unfit to be heard at the United Nations”.

He said Iran was waiting for Trump to apologize for the speech and what he described as an insult to the Iranian people.

“It would be a great pity if this agreement were to be destroyed by rogue newcomers to the world of politics,” Rouhani said.

“The world will have lost a great opportunity,” he declared.

Rouhani said that the 2015 deal, signed by Iran and six world powers in Vienna, could become “a new model for international relations”. As a result of the agreement, Rouhani said Iran had “opened our doors to engagement and cooperation”, and he insisted that Tehran would abide strictly to its terms.

“Iran will not be the first country to violate the agreement,” Rouhani said. “But it will respond decisively and resolutely to its violation by any party.”

“We never threaten anyone but we do not tolerate threats from anyone,” he added. “If the US breaks its commitments under the [nuclear agreement], then no other country be willing to enter into negotiations with the US.”

He said that Iranian officials had spent a lot of time thinking how to respond to the US walking out of the agreement and was “considering various scenarios”.

Rouhani suggested one response could be an increased level of uranium enrichment for Iranian reactors but not an attempt to develop a nuclear warhead.

“Iran will never seek a nuclear weapon,” he said. The president added much would depend on a European response to a US departure, pointing out that European states and businesses had defied US sanctions in the 1990s.

“The actions they take in the future, it will be very effective as far as the decision we take,” Rouhani said.

On Wednesday, Trump told journalists he had made a decision on whether to withdraw certification of the 2015 nuclear deal by a congressional deadline of 15 October.

The US president – a former TV reality show host who clearly enjoys building anticipation for his announcements – said “I have decided” and repeated it three times, but did not say what he had decided, telling reporters: “I’ll let you know.”

If he does not certify the agreement, under which Iran radically reduced its nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief, Congress would have 60 days to decide whether to reimpose US sanctions. If the legislature makes no decision, the onus passes back to the president.

The other signatories of the agreement – the UK, France, Germany, Russia and China – have confirmed Iran is sticking to its obligations, and have urged Washington not to walk away from the deal that the Obama administration signed.

On Tuesday, the UK foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, told the Guardian: “We are continually urging the Americans not to tear it up.”

He added: “I have to tell you the odds are perhaps 50-50.”

Speaking after Trump on Tuesday, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, also defended the deal, saying that its collapse would set the scene for a nuclear standoff as serious as the situation on the Korean peninsula.

Macron said: “Renouncing it would be a grave error, not respecting it would be irresponsible, because it is a good accord that is essential to peace at a time where the risk of an infernal conflagration cannot be excluded.”

Trump received support from the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for his stance on the nuclear agreement, and on Wednesday, Saudi Arabia added its backing.

The kingdom’s foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, said his country did not believe that Iran was abiding by the deal.

“We expect the international community to do whatever it takes to ensure that Iran is in compliance,” Jubeir told reporters at the UN.

It is unclear whether the agreement would survive if the US violated the deal by imposing new sanctions. Before Rouhani’s speech, Tehran had said it was willing to remain committed if the other five national signatories did the same.

Speaking to journalists on Wednesday, Macron said he wanted to add new “pillars” to the international community’s relations with Iran, agree restrictions on its development of ballistic missiles, develop a follow-on deal that would apply after major elements of the existing agreement expire in 2025, and have an “open discussion with Iran about current situation in the region”.

Germany’s chancellor was also frank in her criticism of Trump’s UN speech, addressing his comments on North Korea: “I am against threats of this kind,” Angela Merkel told the broadcaster Deutsche Welle, adding that her government considered any type of military solution “absolutely inappropriate”.

“In my opinion, sanctions and enforcing these sanctions are the right answer. But anything else with regard to North Korea I think is wrong. And that is why we clearly disagree with the US president.”
Merkel proposed that the Iran deal could work as a blueprint for a similar diplomatic effort with North Korea: “We took part in negotiating the Iran agreement, which I think is good, and better than having no agreement at all. It took many years, but in the end it did limit Iran’s possibilities for nuclear armament. And I think we must take the same path or a similar one, with Russia, with China, together with the US, also in the case of North Korea.”