Ayatollah: Trump is 'true face' of U.S.

TEHRAN, Iran -- With Iran calibrating how to deal with President Donald Trump, its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, caustically thanked the new U.S. leader on Tuesday for revealing "the true face" of the United States.

"We are thankful to this newcomer," Khamenei told Iranian air force commanders, according to a report posted on his official website. "He says, 'Be afraid of me."'

Iranian officials had been showing caution since Trump took office last month. Despite expressing anger at his policies and comments, even hard-liners have taken care not to provoke the new U.S. president.

After Khamenei spoke out sarcastically about Trump, others expressed worries.

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Iran's foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said in an interview with an Iranian newspaper that he expected "difficult times ahead" for Iran, now that Trump was in charge.

Iran's president, Hassan Rouhani, defended the nuclear agreement between his country and six world powers, including the United States, by saying that the deal was "win-win" for all.

But Trump -- who has described the nuclear agreement as "really, really bad" but has not made any moves to alter it-- disparaged Iran again on Twitter, this time in a defense against criticism that he is too close to Russia and its leader, President Vladimir Putin. Trump wondered how President Barack Obama could have made a nuclear agreement with Iran, a country Trump described as "#1 in terror."

Trump seemed to be summarizing comments by his new defense secretary, James Mattis, who on Sunday called Iran the "biggest sponsor of state terrorism."

Many Iranians have expressed astonishment and ridicule at such assertions, pointing to terrorist groups that despise Iran and the West. First al-Qaida, responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and more recently the Islamic State, which has been killing thousands in the Middle East and is responsible for committing and inspiring attacks in Europe and the United States.

"Trump is trying to corner Iran, to make us bow before the U.S. and change our behavior, or face confrontation," said Nader Karimi Joni, a political activist close to Rouhani's government.

Trump included Iran on a list of seven predominantly Muslim countries whose citizens have been barred from entering the United States under an executive order that has been blocked, for now, in the U.S. court system. Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn, warned Iran last week that it had been put "on notice" after an Iranian missile test.

The U.S. imposed new economic sanctions on 25 people and entities after the missile launch, which Flynn said had violated a 2015 United Nations Security Council resolution approved after the United States and other world powers reached an agreement with Iran on its nuclear program. Iran has asserted that its missile tests do not violate that resolution and fall within its rights to self-defense.

For Khamenei, Trump's ascent appears to have vindicated many suspicions harbored by the Iranian leader, who has said many times that the United States cannot be trusted.

"He has proven what we have been saying for more than 30 years -- we would always speak about the political, economic, moral and social corruption in the U.S. administration -- this man revealed it during the election campaign and since then," Khamenei said, according to a translated text of the speech.

The Trump White House has adopted a hard line on Iran since the inauguration, banning its citizens from entering the U.S. and accusing the nation of interfering in the affairs of the U.S.' regional allies in the Middle East.

Khamenei, in his speech Tuesday, added that a report that a 5-year-old boy had been handcuffed at Dulles International Airport, outside Washington, during enforcement of Trump's travel "shows the real meaning of American human rights."

Although the boy was detained -- the White House spokesman, Sean Spicer, said that "to assume that just because of someone's age or gender, or whatever, that they don't pose a threat would be misguided and wrong" -- he apparently was not handcuffed.

In a Twitter post Friday, Trump said, "Iran is playing with fire -- they don't appreciate how 'kind' President Obama was to them. Not me!"

Khamenei responded to Trump's Friday posting in biting fashion with his own remarks on Twitter. "Iran should've appreciated Obama!" he wrote, adding, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State: "How come? Appreciate him for #Daesh, war in Iraq &Syria or public support for 2009 unrest?"

In a follow-up post, he said that Iranians would hold a rally this Friday, the 38th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, to show "their position toward threats."

"The Ayatollah is going to realize that there is a new president in office," Spicer said Tuesday. "This president's not going to sit by and let Iran flout its violations or its apparent violations to the joint agreement. But he will continue to take action as he sees fit."

Information for this article was contributed by Thomas Erdbrink, Michael Wolgelenter of The New York Times and by Ladane Nasseri of Bloomberg News.

A Section on 02/08/2017