Thread: Iran shoots back at Trump: 'Color us unimpressed'

Iran shoots back at Trump: 'Color us unimpressed'

By Joshua Berlinger, CNN
Updated 1:32 AM ET, Tue July 24, 2018

(CNN) Iran has shot back at US President Donald Trump, dismissing his all-caps Twitter warning that the country would suffer consequences if it continued to threaten the US, saying it was unimpressed by the late-night tweet.

"COLOR US UNIMPRESSED," Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted Monday night, employing Trump's penchant to use all capital letters in his tweets.

"The world heard even harsher bluster a few months ago. And Iranians have heard them -- albeit more civilized ones -- for 40 yrs. We've been around for millennia & seen fall of empires, incl our own, which lasted more than the life of some countries. BE CAUTIOUS."

Zarif's online comments are the latest in the escalating war of words between Washington and Tehran. Zarif's tweet comes less than a day after Trump posted a furious Twitter warning to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

"NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE," Trump tweeted after returning to the White House from a weekend at his golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey.

"WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!"

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Monday Trump was responding to forceful comments Rouhani made earlier Sunday, in which he warned Trump "do not play with the lion's tail, because you will regret it eternally."

Later Monday morning, national security adviser John Bolton said Trump told him that "if Iran does anything at all to the negative, they will pay a price like few countries have ever paid before."

Foreign policy challenge

Iran experts are unsure if the 280 character-limit broadsides are more likely to foreshadow conflict or if they are a way to project strength before engaging Tehran diplomatically.

Trump employed similarly heated rhetoric when responding to threats and missile tests by North Korea last year.

"The reality is he's such an erratic President that you could see him dropping bombs on Iran or you could see him trying to build hotels in Iran," said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment.
"He's much more impulsive than he is strategic."

When asked if Trump risked inciting war with Iran, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters Monday morning, "if anybody is inciting anything, look no further than to Iran."

She wouldn't directly say whether Trump consulted with his national security team before the tweet. He speaks with them daily, she said, but declined to give any details about any steps Trump is looking to take with Iran.

"The President's been, I think, pretty strong since day one in his language toward Iran. He was responding to comments made from them, and he's going to continue to focus on the safety and security of American people," Sanders said at the White House briefing later Monday. She declined repeated questions about whether Trump would consider meeting with Rouhani.

Trump came into office vowing to take a hard line on Iran and scrap the Obama-negotiated nuclear deal of 2015, a promise he fulfilled in May.

The agreement forced Iran to curtail its uranium enrichment capacity to prevent it developing nuclear weapons, and imposed stringent verification processes, in exchange for relief on crippling sanctions.
One of Trump's many criticisms of the accord, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, was that it did not do enough to stop Iran from funding extremist groups throughout the Middle East.

The other signatories to the deal, including France, the UK and Germany, have vowed to stand by it.

'Something that resembles the mafia'

On Sunday night, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo launched a blistering attack on Iran's religious rulers. The speech, which came hours after Rouhani's threat but before Trump's tweet, has been interpreted as part of a concerted effort within the Trump administration to step up economic and political pressure on Iran.

"The level of corruption and wealth among regime leaders shows that Iran is run by something that resembles the mafia more than a government," Pompeo said during an appearance at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum.

Like Trump, Pompeo is a longstanding critic of the nuclear deal.

"We are asking every nation who is sick and tired of the Islamic Republic's destructive behavior to join our pressure campaign. This especially goes for our allies in the Middle East and Europe, people who have themselves been terrorized by violent regime activity for decades," said Pompeo.

Pompeo, the former director of the CIA, also used the speech to allege that the county's leaders have made billions of dollars from corrupt dealings.

The secretary accused Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's head of state, of maintaining a personal off-the-books hedge fund worth $95 billion.

"These hypocritical holy men have devised all kinds of crooked schemes to become some of the wealthiest men on Earth while their people suffer."

https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/24/polit...ntl/index.html

LOL!! "Color us unimpressed" .... so American. We're winning!!!

Just keep the sanctions on and keep working with Russia. Things will work out in Iran. But do not pull any stunts in Iran to cause incitement or civil war. We don't want that. Do not do that, please.

Trump and Iran's Rouhani trade angry threats

23 July 2018

US President Donald Trump and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani have traded hostile warnings, amid rising tensions between the two countries.

Mr Trump tweeted Iran would "suffer consequences the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before" if it threatened the US.

Mr Rouhani earlier said that war with Iran would be "the mother of all wars".

In May, the US left a deal which curbed Iran's nuclear activities in return for the lifting of international sanctions.

Washington is now re-imposing the sanctions, despite objections from the UK, France, China, Russia and Germany, who all signed the 2015 agreement.

But there are other flashpoints too. The US is deeply suspicious of Iranian activity in the Middle East and is an ally of Israel and Saudi Arabia, two of Iran's foes.

President Rouhani's comments, made to Iranian diplomats, did leave open the possibility of future good relations with the US.

"America should know that peace with Iran is the mother of all peace, and war with Iran is the mother of all wars," he said, according to Iran's state news agency Irna.

Mr Trump's angry rhetoric has echoes of his Twitter barrages against North Korea's Kim Jong-un, whom he branded a "madman". Their verbal hostilities nonetheless evolved into diplomacy.

On Monday, a senior commander in Iran's Revolutionary Guards suggested the US president's statements were part of a broader strategy.

"The remarks Trump makes against Iran are psychological warfare and he would be mistaken should he seek to take action against Iran," Gholamhossein Gheybparvar said, quoted by the Iranian Students News Agency.

On Sunday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he wanted to try to stop countries importing Iranian oil by November as part of continued pressure on Tehran.

Addressing a group of Iranian Americans in California, he said the Iranian regime "resembles the mafia more than a government".

The gathering was the first time a top US official had directly addressed such a large number of Iranian Americans, and is seen as part of the administration's strategy to increase pressure on Iran's leadership.

What do the US and Iran disagree on?

Mr Trump has consistently opposed the 2015 nuclear deal, which saw the US release billions of dollars of frozen assets in exchange for curbs on Iran's nuclear programme

The Trump administration regards Iran as a destabilising force in the Middle East, arguing the nuclear deal enabled Iran to pursue a more assertive regional policy. Iran has sent hundreds of troops and thousands of volunteer militiamen to Syria, and has strengthened its military presence there

Gulf states have accused Iran of backing Yemen's Houthi rebels with both money and weapons, though Iran has denied this. Saudi Arabia, a key US ally, is a major adversary of Iran and has repeatedly warned about Iran's intentions

Why did the US withdraw from the nuclear deal?

In May, Mr Trump called the nuclear accord - or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) as it is formally known - a "horrible, one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made".

He alleged that the deal did not restrict Iran's "destabilising activities" in the region enough, and could not detect or prevent any breaking of its terms.

Analysts also cited the influence of White House Iran hawks including Mr Pompeo and US National Security Adviser John Bolton, and Mr Trump's tendency to target major policies of his predecessor President Obama.

Iran insists its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful, and its compliance with the deal has been verified by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has said Iran is honouring its commitments.

The IAEA has said its inspectors were granted access to all locations they needed to visit in 2017, but that they did not seek to enter any military sites, which Iranian officials declared off-limits - a move the US said raised doubts over Tehran's compliance.

In May, Mr Pompeo outlined 12 conditions for any "new deal" between the US and Iran, including the withdrawal of its forces from Syria and an end to its support for rebels in Yemen.

Iran is one of the world's largest oil producers, with exports worth billions of dollars each year. It is already feeling economic pressures, and has seen large-scale protests over rising prices and a decline in the value of its currency, the rial.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44919772

Iran would be wise to study the list of 12 US conditions and agree soon to comply with them. Perhaps now that Trump and Putin have a good relationship, Russia can and will help Iran see the wisdom of this. I sure hope so, it would be a wonderful thing for the national security of the United States to have a positive and nuclear-worry-free and terrorist-funding-free relationship with Iran. They are a really nice and smart people overall and their younger people like the United States. It's their old religious fanatics, too many of them in one country, that have ruined so much of their potential. Religion and government do not mix, at all, anywhere. I hope more countries come to that realization and we don't forget it.

Well, at least we are talking rather than shooting!

Exactly!! I love Trump Talk and it doesn't cost anything!!