Iranian officials hit back at Washington’s efforts to increase pressures on Tehran

Tabnak – As the US administration has intensified its efforts to create a new artificial crisis over Iran, this time with the excuse of its missile program, Iranian high-ranking officials stress that the country won’t come back from its path of regional strength.

In this vein, Iranian Deputy Prime Minister Abbas Araqchi said on Friday that he United States only brought itself more isolation in the international community every time it tried to target Iran at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). 

Speaking on the sidelines of the 29th meeting of the International Conference of Asian Political Parties in Tehran, Araqchi enumerated recent US attempts to make Tehran an object of rebuke at the 15-nation council, including claims about Iran’s conventional missile program and scattered riots inside the country as well as allegations of missile delivery to Yemen.

“Every time, the US presented Iran’s missile issue, Yemen or even the unrest inside Iran and sought to use these issues to drag Iran to the Security Council, it conversely resulted in its own isolation,” he said.

US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley hosted a lunch on Monday at the White House, attended by President Donald Trump, at which she displayed parts of the missile, allegedly manufactured by Iran, to her counterparts in the UN Security Council. 

She had earlier showcased some pieces of missile and weapons claiming that Tehran has violated the UN Security Council's resolutions by sending the missile to Yemeni Ansarollah forces. 

In the same vein, a senior Iranian lawmaker says US accusations about the Islamic Republic providing Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah fighters with ballistic missiles are just a political and ridiculous show.

"The US move to display the missiles and attribute them to Iran is a political and ridiculous show…which follows two purposes," Chairman of the Iranian Parliament's Committee on National Security and Foreign Policy Alaeddin Boroujerdi told IRNA on Friday. Citing the two objectives of the US, Boroujerdi said Trump aims to undermine the Islamic Republic's missile capabilities and prepare the ground for involvement in the issue which "is definitely a red line for the Islamic Republic of Iran."

The previous day, on Thursday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani rejected Washington’s claim of having “sympathy” for the Iranian people, saying the nation has not forgotten the American acts of aggression in the region.

Speaking at a large gathering of people in the southern city of Sirjan in Kerman province on Thursday, Rouhani said, “Nobody in Washington should think that they can make decisions for the great Iranian nation.”

Rouhani argued that during the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s eight-year war against Iran and his use of chemical weapons against the country, no official in the US showed care for the Iranian people and the nation pushed out the enemy through self-sacrifice.

In his first State of the Union address to Congress on Tuesday, US President Donald Trump boasted of his meddlesome stance on a wave of riots that hit a number of Iranian towns and cities last month, saying, "I did not stay silent. America stands with the people of Iran in their courageous struggle for freedom."