I
n a speech to an immense crowd in Esfahan last Wednesday, President Rohani harshly attacked the West in general and the United States in particular in a speech that could have been written by his predecessor, Mahmud Ahmadi-nejad.
Many thought the speech was tailored to appease the hardline element, which has been accusing him of failing to stand up to the West in the nuclear negotiations.
Rohani was speaking to an immense audience that packed almost every corner of the huge 400-year-old Naqsh-e Jahan square in Esfahan, which has been renamed Imam Square to honor Ayatollah Khomeini.
“They [Westerners] tell us. ‘We don’t want Iran to make atomic bombs’—you who have made atomic bombs,” Rohani mocked at one point.
“Have you managed to bring about security for yourselves with atomic bombs? Have you managed to create security for the usurper Israel?” Rohani asked, calling the Jewish state “criminal.”
He complained that “you” have given nuclear weapons to Israel. In the 1950s, the Fourth French Republic gave Israel major help in starting its nuclear program. That aid was stopped by Charles de Gaulle when he took power.
Rohani said, “We don’t need an atomic bomb. We have a great, self-sacrificing and unified nation.”
In another barb, Rohani criticized the US healthcare program. “You didn’t manage to cover all your people with insurance,… but my government, which serves the people, has covered everyone with insurance,” he said. “You, in America, didn’t manage to resolve the health problem.”
He asserted that in Iran the average citizen pays only 4 percent of medical costs with the state picking up the rest.
