US President Donald Trump’s speech sparks a new war of words between US, Iran

A portrait of US President Donald Trump is set on fire by Iranian mourners during the state funeral of Mohsen Hojaji, a young Revolutionary Guard soldier beheaded by the Islamic State group in Syria, in Tehran, Iran. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi, File)

President Donald Trump’s refusal to certify the Iran nuclear deal has sparked a new war of words between the Islamic Republic and America. Trump’s speech on Friday has also fueled the growing mistrust of the United States and a sense of nationalism among Iranians.

The speech has served to unite Iranians across the political spectrum _ from Trump’s declining to call the Persian Gulf, the waterway through which a third of all oil traded by sea passes, by its name, to undercutting those trying to change Iran’s clerically overseen government from within.

The speech is also likely to strengthen the hand of hard-liners within Iran, who long have insisted that America remains the same “Great Satan” denounced in the 1979 Islamic Revolution.