Tehran: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Wednesday he was "not excited" about U.S. President-elect Joe Biden taking office, more than outgoing President Donald Trump would soon be "gone".
"A guy (Trump) that has committed so many crimes, he was an assassin and a terrorist," Rouhani claimed during a Cabinet meeting.
The Trump administration has taken a series of tough actions against Iran.
Two years ago, Trump withdrew from the landmark 2015 Iran nuclear deal, a signature foreign policy achievement of predecessor Barack Obama.
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Since then, the Trump administration has steadily ramped up pressure on Iran, re-imposing a wide swath of sanctions and taking other actions, including killing the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in a drone strike at the airport in Baghdad this year.
That move, coupled with retaliatory attacks against Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, stepped-up sanctions against Iranian proxies in Lebanon and Yemen and the recent killing of an Iranian nuclear scientist outside of Tehran that has been attributed to Israel, have left the impression that Trump is seeking to box in Biden when he takes office in January.
Biden has said he wants to reenter the 2015 nuclear deal but also improve and expand on it.
Those prospects may prove difficult to realise if the situation escalates in the next five weeks.
AP
