Major General Hossein Salami claimed Thursday that Iran remains strong despite American sanctions, a struggling economy and the impact of coronavirus, while U.S. politicians are grappling with mass protests over police brutality and systemic racism.
America’s adversaries have jumped on the unrest—sparked by the killing of black man George Floyd by police in Minneapolis last month—to attack the U.S., condemning racism and human rights abuses by police despite continuing to suppress dissidents and persecute minorities at home.
Iran, Russia and China have all condemned the U.S. government over Floyd’s death and the heavy-handed police response to subsequent protests.
Salami said the world is “witnessing the early and rapid decline of our archenemies, particularly the U.S.,” according to the Tasnim news agency.
The commander continued: “All of the symbols with which the U.S. was presenting itself and was displaying an untrue image to the world are falling, and the U.S. is tearing apart the image it had created about itself.”
“We can see that the American nation is now burning the U.S. flag which rendered Washington’s fake image to the world,” Salami said, referring to marchers who have set fire to American flags during protests.
Also on Thursday, senior cleric Ayatollah Amoli Larijani claimed that the unrest in the U.S. shows that the American government only cares about human rights when using them to advance its goals abroad.
Larijani—who has been sanctioned by both the European Union and the U.S. for involvement in the regime’s human rights abuses—told a session of Iran’s Expediency Council Thursday: The Americans have for years lectured other countries on human right."
He also said the recent protests show that human rights are “nothing but a means [to achieve U.S. objectives].”
President Donald Trump’s administration is continuing its “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, which began after the president withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—colloquially known as the Iran nuclear deal—in 2018.
Iran is now back under U.S. sanctions, exacerbating its economic struggles, while Washington is also pushing for an arms embargo on Tehran to be extended.
Despite the economic strain and several rounds of mass unrest, Iranian leaders have dismissed the impact of sanctions while also calling for them to be lifted. President Hassan Rouhani claimed on Wednesday that Iranians had foiled Trump’s “knees on necks” strategy—a reference to Floyd’s death—through their “resilience.”
Iranian officials have also used the coronavirus pandemic to attack the Trump administration. Salami said Thursday that the U.S. has been “unable to contain the coronavirus” and that the crisis has plunged the country into “the worst economic conditions.”
Iran was one of the worst affected nations early in the pandemic. The U.S. has since recorded more than 2 million cases and 112,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University—the most of any nation in the world.
