Asia

Asia

Ahmadinejad: "Iran has nothing to fear from US"

16 April 2017 02:29 (UTC +04:00)

Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who recently surprised everyone by joining the presidential race, has given an interview in which he called Iran a “powerful country” that the “US administration cannot hurt” and voiced support for the nuclear deal deal struck between Iran and global powers in 2015, APA reports quoting Sputnik.

In his interview, Ahmadinejad ruled out that the recent US missile strike on Syria was a message to Iran.

"I do not think it has a message for Iran. Iran is a powerful country and people like Mr. Trump or the United States administration cannot hurt Iran," he said.

He speculated that the missile strike was instead orchestrated behind closed doors and depended little on the man in the Oval Office. Should Democratic contender Hillary Clinton have won the presidential race, the strike would have happened anyway, he said, but noted that the persona of Donald Trump fits the interests of the shadow government better.

"Those who are the directors must give the role [of president] to a person who can pull it off best. A woman cannot put up a good war face," he said. "A man can do that better. They need to come up with a figure and say he is very dangerous."

However, Ahmadinejad noted that Trump's outward aggressiveness is little more than political posturing, since a truly aggressive man couldn't amass a fortune like his.

"If he were dangerous, he would not have $70 billion of assets. However, he has no choice but to play such a role," he said. He did not elaborate on the dollar figure.

Ahmadinejad gave reserved support for the 2015 deal with the US, commonly referred to as the Iranian nuclear deal. The deal allowed Iran to return to international markets in exchange for curbing its nuclear weapons program.

"The nuclear deal is a legal document and a pact. In the Islamic Republic, the officials and the supreme leader have approved of it and declared their commitment to it," he said.

"The problem about the nuclear deal is how they advertised it. Both parties have represented it in such a way as if it can solve all the issues of human history. It was incorrect. It later turned out to be untrue," he continued.

Ahmadinejad puzzled everyone by surprisingly registering as a presidential candidate earlier this month. The current leader, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly suggested that Ahmadinejad's candidacy would split the country and create a "polarizing situation" inside Iran.

So far Ahmadinejad has refrained from repeating the harshest of his earlier political statements, including calls for destruction of Israel and challenging the scale of the Holocaust.