March 26, 2021
Iran’s military and civilian figures are undertaking a public relations assault of insults on President Biden, as Iranian leaders try to pressure the White House into lifting economic sanctions.
Armed forces spokesman Brigadier General Abolfazl Shekarchi said March 12, “In our view, there is no difference between Biden and Trump,” echoing a theme civilian leaders started making when Biden failed to lift the sanctions quickly after taking office January 20.
Shekarchi dismissed the US as an “arrogant, oppressive, and looter regime,” arguing that “Biden’s taking office will not create any difference in the totalitarian policies of the Americans.
“Trump was implementing US oppressive policies openly and Biden is implementing those more covertly,” Shekarchi said.
This was a return to an old theme that the Soviet Union propounded for decades that there is no democracy or real elections in the United States, only an oligarchy that decides who will sit in the White House and carry out the oligarchy’s policies.
One mystery is why Iran’s officials seem to think that insults will pressure Biden to act differently. Some think they don’t expect any change in Washington but use the insults as a response to Iranian citizens who blame officials of the regime for the fact that Biden is not more responsive.
Meanwhile, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi claimed that the Islamic Republic’s presence in countries such as Iraq and Syria is not for military control, but rather for “advisory” assistance.
“We are there to support sovereign governments at their own behest,” he said, rejecting the US depiction of Iran as a “destabilizing” factor. Khamenehi also criticized the American military for establishing bases in those two countries “without permission” from the hosts. It is certainly in Syria without permission of the government. But in Iraq, the US has no bases of its own but has troops on Iraqi bases, obviously with the permission of the Iraqi government.
“They claim they are against weapons of mass destruction,” the Iranian leader said, before throwing a sarcastic quip at the US for “lying” because “they possess the worst and most dangerous of such weapons—and they have used them.”
Khamenehi’s speech also targeted Washington’s ties with Riyadh. The Americans “defended a convict who dismembered his opponent with a saw,” Khamenehi said of the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his role in the 2018 murder of prominent dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. “The Americans have been inverting the truth.”
But the Biden Administration recently released a report kept under wraps by the Trump Administration that said Prince Mohammad was behind the assassination.