This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Iran has dismissed Binyamin Netanyahu’s speech to the US congress as “boring and repetitive”, characterising it as an anti-Iranian tirade aimed at influencing the upcoming elections in Israel.



Between the lines of Binyamin Netanyahu's speech to Congress Read more

“Netanyahu’s lie-spreading campaign against Iran’s peaceful nuclear programme has become boring and repetitive,” the Islamic republic’s foreign ministry spokeswoman, Marzieh Afkham, said on Tuesday shortly after the Israeli prime minister’s speech before a joint session of US Congress.

“The speech by the Zionist regime’s prime minister was a piece of deceitful theatre which is part of the hardliners’ election campaign in Tel Aviv,” she was quoted as saying by the state news agencies.

The Twitter account of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which is run by his office, also reacted to the speech by posting a number of tweets condemning Israel and its treatment of Palestinians.

Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) In the past 50 yrs, how much money and #reputation has it cost US to support #Israel’s crimes? Who other than its nation has paid for it?

Netanyahu’s speech was closely watched by ordinary Iranians: those with access to illegal satellite dishes could watch his speech live but many others followed it on social media.

“Netanyahu is mirroring [former president Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad with his radical and illogical views,” one user tweeted. Many Iranian users were using hashtag #ShutUpNetanyahu in order to show their opposition to his comments.

Earlier in the day, Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of Iran’s great political survivors, who is seen as President Hassan Rouhani’s patron, said that internal opponents of Tehran’s nuclear negotiating team were echoing Netanyahu.

Netanyahu tells Congress: nuclear deal 'paves Iran’s path to the bomb' Read more

“We are facing all sorts of pressure from outside but inside the country there’s even a greater challenge,” Rafsanjani said on Tuesday. “Netanyahu is threatening Obama there [in Washington] and here [in Tehran] a group of people are threatening to reveal secrets,” he said. “They [the internal opponents] are echoing Netanyahu.”

Rafsanjani was referring to a large number of conservative Iranian lawmakers who have attacked Rouhani’s nuclear diplomacy as well as his negotiating team in recent months. Many Iranian hardliners are opposed to a nuclear deal with the west, saying Tehran is giving away too much for too little.

The ultra-conservative newspaper, Kayhan, took a conspiratorial view of Netanyahu’s speech and published a front-page article on Tuesday which said the Israeli prime minister is in favour of a nuclear deal but is instead showing opposition in order to deceive Tehran to accept it. “Netanyahu’s mission: supporting the Geneva deal under the cover of opposition,” read Kayhan’s headline.