In a very offensive speech before the UN, the Iranian president promised Donald Trump this Wednesday that his country would not “bow its head” in the face of the aggression launched against his country, calling itself a victim of American “terrorism”. Responding to the tenant of the White House, who the day before threatened to “annihilate” his country, Massoud Pezeshkian warned that “the resistance of the Iranian people will only intensify in the face of sanctions, growing pressure and growing intimidation.”
“We have never been an aggressor”, “never started a war”, insisted the president, the most senior Tehran official to visit American soil since the start of the war, triggered at the end of February by Israeli-American strikes. He also said Iran would not tolerate the Strait of Hormuz being used for “aggression” against its country. “They have closed us off access to our own territorial waters,” the leader said of the United States, while using “missiles and lethal technologies to bring insecurity to all areas bordering this sea lane.”
The reopening of the strategic Strait of Hormuz remains at the heart of the conflict between Tehran and Washington. Traffic in this sea route, through which a fifth of the world’s hydrocarbons passed before the war, has been severely disrupted by Tehran since the start of the war.
