US trying to cover up failures by demonizing IRGC: President

Tehran, April 9, IRNA – The 'global arrogance' is trying to cover up its failures versus Iranian people by labeling the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) as terrorists, Iran's President Hassan Rouhani said on Tuesday. The US President Donald Trump on Monday announced that Washington considered IRGC a terrorist organization while the IRGC is a major sector of Iran's official Armed Forces. Explaining the underlying reasons why IRGC was founded soon after the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Rouhani said that Iran needed forces to confront the numerous plots by its enemies. 'They (the enemies) created and funded cells and provided them with explosives to kill Iranian officials, people and the revolutionaries to push them again under the US hegemony,' Rouhani said in his speech on Iran's National Nuclear Technology Day (April 9). 'So, do you expect the US and the Zionist regime not to hold grudges on IRGC?' 'All their plots against the Iranian people were foiled through the efforts of the entire nation including the youth, women and men, all ethnic groups, Shias and Sunnis who all stood with each other, with IRGC as their big flag-bearer,' Rouhani said. The latest anti-Iran move of Trump received fierce reactions from Iranian officials. The country's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif in a letter to President Hassan Rouhani called for a retaliatory move by labeling the United States Central Command (CENTCOM) as a terrorist organization and the US government as a terrorist sponsor. Follow us on Twitter @IrnaEnglish