Iran reacts harshly to Netanyahu speech

Parliament speaker Ali Larijani warns that if Israel dares attack Iran with US congressional support, the Americans should expect to see “Israel in a wheelchair.”

By ARIEL BEN SOLOMON
Hassan Rouhani (photo credit: REUTERS)
Hassan Rouhani
(photo credit: REUTERS)
An Iranian reaction to the speech of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a joint session of the US Congress was not long in coming, with numerous instances of harsh criticism leveled at both the speech and Israel.
“The only one who is angry and upset about the course of negotiations is an occupying regime that sees its survival in war and invasion,” President Hassan Rouhani said at a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, according to Iran’s Mehr News.
“People in the world, as well as the Americans, are much more perceptive than to trust the words of advice from a regime that has a long reputation for causing conflict and crisis,” Rouhani said.
Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani warned that if Israel dares attack Iran with US congressional support, the Americans should expect to see a “crushing and multilateral response” that would leave “Israel in a wheelchair,” the Tasnim News Agency reported.
Netanyahu’s speech was nothing but “an hour of repetitious slogans” demonstrating the “fake regime’s anxiety,” Larijani said, adding that the problem for Israel was not Iran’s nuclear program, but the regional influence of the Islamic Revolution.
Larijani rejected Netanyahu’s accusation that Iran supports terrorism, calling the claim “ridiculous,” the Fars News Agency reported. He went on to call the accusation hypocritical since it was Israel, he said, that kills Palestinians and Iranian nuclear scientists.
Marzieh Afkham, spokeswoman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, called the speech a “deceitful show and part of an electoral campaign made by radicals in Tel Aviv,” the state news agency IRNA said.
“There is no doubt that world public opinion gives no value or status to a child-killer regime,” Afkham said.
The “constant lying” by the Israeli leader about Iran’s goals and its peaceful nuclear program were “boring” and nothing new, she added.