A spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry is criticizing President Trump for a tweet in Farsi supporting Iranian protesters, saying the president is not “entitled to dishonor” the Persian language.
“Hands and tongues smeared with threatening, sanctioning and terrorizing the #Iranian nation, are not entitled to dishonor the ancient #Persian_language,” Abbas Mousavi tweeted on Sunday.
“By the way, are you actually ‘standing by’ millions of Iranians whose hero you just assassinated or ‘standing against’ them?!” Mousavi added.
Trump tweeted in Farsi on Saturday that the Iranian protesters’ “courage is inspiring.”
Protesters reportedly flooded the streets of Tehran chanting “death to liars’ and “death to the dictator” in reference to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The protests came after Tehran admitted that it inadvertently shot down a passenger jet bound for Ukraine.
The plane was shot down just hours after Iran launched a missile strike on two Iraqi military bases that housed U.S. troops in response to the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
Iran had initially denied responsibility for downing the plane.