President Hassan Rouhani says Iranians will defeat US President Donald Trump like what they did to former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
He made the remarks in a military parade in Tehran on Saturday to mark the beginning of the week that commemorates Iran's eight-year resistance against Iraq’s 1980-88 invasion.
About 600 vessels took part in the Persian Gulf naval drill, a day after Iran held aerial exercises in the waterway, vowing that a "pounding reply" awaited the country's enemies.
Trump withdrew from a landmark multilateral nuclear deal in May and reimposed sanctions on the Islamic Republic last month.
"The same will happen to Trump. America will suffer the same fate as Saddam Hussein," Rouhani said.
The president also said Iran will not abandon its defensive weapons, including its missiles "that make America so angry".
The Sacred Defense Week begins on Shahrivar 31 in the Iranian calendar (September 22 this year), which is the day Iraq invaded Iran and began the imposed war on the country in 1980.
September 22 is considered as one of the turning points in the history of the Iranian nation.
The role of Imam Khomeini's leadership who was directly and prudently commanding the war is special and takes lots of studies and researches. In case of lacking the kind of wise leadership the country that had newly passed a revolution and was challenging kinds of crises of domestics and foreign pressures including embargos and sanctions soon would collapse badly.
Imam once said in a historic message in this regard as following: In every day of wartime we’ve received a blessing of which we have taken advantage in every arena. We have exported our revolution to the world in the imposed war.
Nearly four decades ago, Sadaam Hussein, the then Iraqi dictator supported by major Western and regional states, launched the massive military invasion against Iran.
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