Leader calls Trump ‘idiot’ as Iran marks 40th anniversary

Iran’s President has insisted that “enemy” plots against the country would fail as vast crowds marked 40 years since the Islamic revolution at a time of heightened tensions with the US.

“The presence of people today on the streets all over Islamic Iran … means that the enemy will never reach its evil objectives,” President Hassan Rouhani told those on Tehran’s Azadi Square, decrying a “conspiracy” involving Washington.

Chador-clad women, militia members in camouflage fatigues and ordinary citizens marched through the capital in freezing rain on Monday to commemorate the day in February 1979 that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ended millennia of royal rule.

The routes leading up to the square were packed with people as loudspeakers blared revolutionary anthems and slogans.

Mr Rouhani lambasted calls from the US and Europe for a fresh agreement to curb Iran’s missile program. “We have not, and will not, request permission from anyone for increasing our defensive power and for building all kinds of … missiles,” he said.

He warned that Iran was now far stronger than when it faced off against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in a devastating 1980-88 war.

“Today the whole world should know that the Islamic Republic of Iran is considerably more powerful than the days of the war,” Mr Rouhani said.

Read the article in The Australian (AFP).