‘Mother of all wars… mother of all peace’: Did Iran’s Rouhani just troll Trump?

Responding to US foreign policy, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has landed on an interesting choice of words that’s quite similar to buzzwords linked to Donald Trump.

Rouhani warned in a televised speech on Tuesday that Iranian policies towards the US will mirror Washington’s policies towards Tehran. If the US wants to negotiate, it should lift all the sanctions first, he stressed.

Peace with Iran is the mother of all peace; war with Iran is the mother of all wars.

The turn of phrase might also be a dig against President Donald Trump, who also had several ‘mother of all’ slogans associated with him. In 2017, the US dropped a powerful bomb, dubbed ‘Mother of All Bombs’ (MOAB), on Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) positions in Afghanistan. The president praised the highly-publicized airstrike as a “very successful mission.” A massive pro-Trump rally in Washington, DC later that year was promoted as ‘Mother of All Rallies’ (MOAR).

In his speech, Rouhani also warned the US against “undermining” Iran’s security and evoked an ‘eye for an eye’ approach.

A strait for a strait. It can’t be that the Strait of Hormuz is free for you and the Strait of Gibraltar is not free for us.

Tensions flared last month after British Royal Marines and Gibraltar police seized an Iranian oil tanker in the Strait of Gibraltar, which was suspected of transporting oil to Syria in violation of EU sanctions. Two weeks later, Iranian forces seized a British tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran said violated maritime rules.

In response to the tanker seizure, the US has proposed sending an international naval squadron to patrol the waters near the Strait of Hormuz against “Iranian aggression.” Officials in Tehran warned that this move will only further increase tensions and stressed that security in the Persian Gulf should be maintained by the local countries, not by faraway powers.

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