With two years of painstaking diplomacy at risk as the clock ran down on a deal to end Iran’s global isolation, Hassan Rouhani abandoned his usual caution to take a swipe at critics at home and abroad.
Domestic opponents were indifferent to the damage sanctions had done to the “pockets of the people,” Iran’s president said in a June 14 speech, at times having to shout above the crowd. With little more than two weeks before the end-of-month deadline for a nuclear accord, his message for the international community was similarly blunt. Iran would “combat sanctions” and “abolish them,” he said.
