In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour Sunday, President Rohani sneered at the herd of GOP candidates seeking their party’s presidential nomination, saying they were so ill-educated they didn’t know whether Tehran was the capital of Iran or Iran the capital of Tehran.
“Sometimes when I would have time, some of it was broadcast live and I would watch it—some of it was quite laughable. It was very strange, the things that they spoke of,” he said through an interpreter. Rohani’s knowledge of English is very limited, so it wasn’t clear if he was speaking of listening to a translation of some interviews.
“Some of them wouldn’t even know where Tehran was in relation to Iran. Some of them didn’t know where Iran was geographically, not distinguishing that one is the capital of the other.”
“So what they spoke of was quite far away from the truth. So the people of Iran were looking at it as a form of entertainment, if you will, and found it laughable.”
The Iran Times has not heard any of the candidates confusing Tehran with Iran, though some of their descriptions of the nuclear deal with Iran suggest they haven’t read it.
Rohani was also dismissive of the threats of several of candidates to ignore the agreement if they win the presidency.
“I will rip to shreds this catastrophic Iranian nuclear deal,” Ted Cruz has said repeatedly.
Were the US president after Barack Obama to do that, Rohani said, it would destroy American credibility abroad, an interesting observation given that the Islamic Republic has long insisted the United States has no credibility.
“Can a government become a signatory to an international agreement and then the subsequent government tears it to shreds? This is something that only the likes of Saddam Hussein would do,” he said.
“Saddam Hussein, previous to attacking Iran in 1980, did sign an agreement with Iran [delineating the border] and then tore it to shreds himself and then attacked Iran.
“So any government that replaces the current government must keep itself committed to the commitments given by the previous administration. Otherwise, that government, that entire country, will lose trust internationally and no longer have the type of needed trust to operate in the international arena.” This is what many foreign policy scholars in the United States and Europe have said.
“So, finally, I think most of these are political slogans at best,” Rohani said, indicating he doesn’t believe any of the candidates would really tear up the agreement if one became president.