Iran's security chief Ali Larijani on Thursday launched into a withering critique of Donald Trump, likening the US President to Hitler and tarring him as a "mere businessman" whose Gaza peace summit Tehran gladly missed.
The scorching comments in a speech delivered by Larijani, a key aide to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, have few parallels among top officials in recent months even amid a US-Israeli war in June.
Coming after Khamenei addressed Trump directly in a speech on Monday to "keep dreaming" about the president's "nonsense" on destroying Iran's nuclear program, the remarks signal a hardened line among Iran's top decision-makers on their top foe.
"Trump’s statement that he wants to create peace through strength is a strange one — because Hitler said the same thing," Larijani said in a speech at an event in Tehran commemorating an Iranian commander killed in the civil war in Syria in 2015.
Larijani was appointed Secretary of Iran's National Security Council following the summer conflict and is Khamenei's personal representative to the key body.
He dismissed a summit held in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm al-Sheikh on Oct. 12 to formally clinch a US-brokered ceasefire in Gaza as a “Trump show” to which the president arrived late, "spoke only by himself, did not allow anyone to speak and even mocked the heads of the countries present."
Trump had invited Iran to participate in the event and had raised eyebrows in an address to the Israeli Knesset earlier in the day in which he said Washington hoped Tehran could be folded into a broader Mideast peace.
Iranian officials bristled at the attacks by their two top foes, calling them illegal, asserting that its nuclear activities are peaceful and lamenting that the military campaign was launched while Washington and Tehran were in the midst of talks.
The summit “was low-level and had no place for revolutionary Iran," Larijani said.
It was attended by several heads of state from Western and Islamic countries but not those of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates or Israel. A video of Trump shaking a senior Emirati official's hand at the summit and intoning with a smile, "A lot of cash!" circulated widely online.
Trump's relationship with Arab states also came into Larijani's crosshairs, a veteran navigator of the highest echelons of Iran's opaque security and political establishment, who said the property developer turned president exploited his wealthy Mideast allies.
"Trump ... sees the Arabs as money and is merely a businessman," Larijani said.
Iran's top officials have for months held off on direct criticism of Trump or commentary on the US relationship with Arab neighbors as it has pursued a rapprochement with the latter and appeared to weigh dialogue with the West.
An impasse over Iran's nuclear activities has persisted despite the war in June and disagreements have festered since European countries triggered the restoration of UN sanctions last month.
Western states seek the resumption of US-Iran talks and inspections by the UN nuclear watchdog while Tehran has ruled out what they call US demands to rein in its missile program and support for armed Mideast allies.
