Iran’s president has claimed that his country is in an all-out war with the West, days before Donald Trump meets with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Masoud Pezeshkian said that the “full-scale war with the US, Israel and Europe” was worse than Iran’s war with Iraq in the 1980s, in which hundreds of thousands of people died.
“We are in a full-scale war with the US, Israel and Europe; they do not want our country to stand on its feet,” he said in the interview published on the website of the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Saturday.
Mr Pezeshkian said the West’s war against Iran is “more complicated and more difficult” compared to the 1980-88 war with Iraq that left more than 1 million casualties on both sides.
“In the war with Iraq, the situation was clear: they fired missiles, and I also knew where to hit,” he explained. “Here, they are besieging us from every aspect, they are putting us in difficulty and constraint, creating problems – in terms of livelihood, culturally, politically, and security-wise – while raising society’s expectations.
“On one side, they block our sales, our exchanges, our trade, and on the other side, expectations in society have risen! Consequently, we must all help with all our might to fix the country.”
The remarks came just two days before a planned meeting between Mr Trump and Mr Netanyahu during the Israeli leader’s visit to the US.
Iran is expected to be a key topic in the talks after Israel and the US came together during a 12-day air war in June, which killed nearly 1,100 Iranians, among them senior military commanders and nuclear scientists. Retaliatory missile barrages by Iran killed 28 in Israel.
Mr Netanyahu is expected to brief Mr Trump on possible new Iran strikes during his visit, according to NBC, as Israel remains concerned that Iran is expanding production of its ballistic missile program.
On top of the Iranian president’s war declaration, the Ayatollah shared a statement for the 2025 annual meeting of the Union of Islamic Student Associations in Europe on his website, where he said that Iran had overcome a heavy assault by the US army.
He said: “The heavy assault by the US army and its disgraceful extension in this region was overcome by the initiative, courage, and sacrifice of the young people of Islamic Iran.”
