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Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has sharply rebuked US President Donald Trump’s recent comments made during his visit to Saudi Arabia, accusing the US leader of hypocrisy and blaming him for regional instability.
Speaking in Kermanshah on Thursday, Pezeshkian called Trump “naive for thinking he can come to our region, threaten us, and hope that we back down against his demands,” according to Iranian media.
“We will never negotiate our dignity. This is in the blood of every Iranian,” he added.
The Iranian president was responding to Trump’s remarks in Riyadh, where he criticized Iran’s leadership for mismanagement, environmental degradation, and funding terrorism.
Trump accused Iran’s rulers of turning “green farmland into desert” and using public wealth to “support terror and bloodshed.”
Pezeshkian dismissed the criticism and said Iranians would rebuild their country and region without foreign intervention. “The one who speaks of peace has brought destruction to our region,” he said, referring to Trump.
He denounced US sanctions and human rights accusations, saying, “Trump, you impose sanctions and then lecture us on human rights. All the unrest and crimes in the region are your doing.”
“You call us dangerous, but you carry out genocide in front of the world,” he said.
US President Donald Trump’s high-profile tour of the Persian Gulf has placed unprecedented diplomatic and symbolic pressure on Iran, exposing deep contrasts between the Islamic Republic and its southern neighbors, analyst Morad Veisi said.
While US policies have long strained Tehran, the latest visit—marked by lavish welcomes, multibillion-dollar tech and defense deals, and promises of AI-driven futures—delivered a “deeper and more dangerous” blow to Iran’s leadership than military threats, Veisi argued.
He added that the tour, highlighting development, prosperity, and future-oriented visions in the Persian Gulf nations, undermined Iran's attempts to portray them as solely oil-dependent economies.
“The Islamic Republic finds itself in a defensive and weakened position,” he said, pointing to the powerful contrast in media portrayals of progress in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar, compared to Iran’s deepening infrastructure, economic, and social crises.
The trip also triggered painful comparisons among ordinary Iranians. “People are now asking: if not for the Islamic Republic, could Iran have kept pace—or even surpassed—its neighbors?” Veisi added.
US President Donald Trump visited al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar on Thursday, a critical military installation that has served as a major staging ground for US operations in the Middle East, including recent air strikes against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.
The base currently houses approximately 8,000 personnel, down from around 10,000 troops during the height of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
He added that Qatar will invest $10 billion in coming years in the base, southwest of the country's capital Doha.
Days before a surprise US ceasefire agreement with Houthis earlier in the month, US intelligence started picking up indications the Yemeni fighters were looking for an exit after seven weeks of relentless US bombings, Reuters reported citing four American officials.
Houthi leaders began reaching out sometime around the first weekend in May to US allies in the Middle East, two of the officials said.
"We started getting intel that the Houthis had had enough," one of the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity to recount the internal discussions about the intelligence.
Two sources said Iran played an important role in encouraging the Houthis to negotiate, as Tehran pursues its own talks aimed at ending US sanctions and preventing a military strike by the US or Israel.
