President Hassan Rouhani said on Sunday Iran was ready to confront the United States and its Gulf Arab allies, a day after an attack on an Iranian military parade killed 25 people, including 12 members of the elite Revolutionary Guards, reports Reuters.
Speaking before leaving Tehran to attend the annual UN General Assembly in New York, Rouhani accused US-backed Gulf Arab states of providing financial and military support for anti-government ethnic Arab groups in Iran.
"America is acting like a bully toward the rest of the world...and thinks it can act based on brute force," said Rouhani, who engineered Iran's 2015 nuclear deal that ushered in a cautious detente with Washington before tensions flared anew with President Donald Trump's decision to quit the accord.
"But our people will resist and the government is ready to confront America. We will overcome this situation (sanctions) and America will regret choosing the wrong path."
Iran's Foreign Ministry on Sunday summoned the United Arab Emirates' charge d' affaires over comments made about the bloodshed in the southwestern city of Ahvaz.
State-run PressTV said the action was taken over comments by an unnamed UAE official, without giving details.
The Gulf Arab state of Qatar, which is at odds with US allies Saudi Arabia and the UAE, condemned the assault on the military parade, which wounded at least 70 people.
Gunmen fired on a viewing stand where Iranian officials had gathered to watch an annual event marking the start of the Islamic Republic's 1980-88 war with Iraq. Soldiers crawled as gunfire crackled. Women and children fled for their lives.
An AFP report adds: Rouhani appeared to blame Arab separatists for an attack on a military parade the previous day that left 29 people dead.
"It is absolutely clear to us who has done this, which group it is and to whom they are affiliated," Rouhani said on state television shortly before leaving Tehran for the UN General Assembly in New York.
"Those who have caused this catastrophe … were Saddam's mercenaries as long as he was alive and then changed masters," he said, referring to late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
"One of the countries in the south of the Persian Gulf took care of their financial, weaponry and political needs," Rouhani added.
"All these little mercenary countries we see in this region are backed by America. It is the Americans who incite them", he said.
Four militants on Saturday attacked the parade commemorating the beginning of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, launched by Baghdad, in the southwestern city of Ahvaz, capital of Khuzestan Province.
Officials and an eyewitness said the gunmen were dressed in Iranian military uniforms and sprayed the crowd with gunfire using weapons they had stashed in a nearby park.
Earlier, Iran summoned diplomats from Denmark, the Netherlands and Britain over an attack on an army parade which killed at least 29 people near the Iraqi border, state-run media said on Sunday.
The Dutch and Danish ambassadors and the British charge d'affaires were "informed of Iran's strong protests over their respective countries' hosting of some members of the terrorist group" which carried out the attack, official news agency IRNA said.
Iranian officials have blamed "a foreign regime" backed by the United States.
