Khamenei says hostility toward Iran will linger under Biden

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, cautioned on Wednesday that the relationship between Tehran and the U.S. would not immediately thaw with the exit of President Trump.

Reuters reported that the supreme leader in comments published on his official website pointed to the Obama administration, in which President-elect Joe Biden served as vice president. 

“The hostility is not just from Trump’s America, which will not end when he leaves, as Obama’s America also did bad things to … the Iranian nation,” said Khamenei, according to Reuters.

Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, indicated earlier this week that his government would be eager to reenter the nuclear agreement with the U.S. and European allies should Biden rejoin it, which the president-elect has vowed to do.

In a speech on Monday, Rouhani reportedly said that Iran would rejoin the nuclear pact within an hour after the U.S. restores it, while cautioning the Biden administration against seeking limits on Iran’s ballistic missile program.

The current administration and the government in Tehran largely avoided negotiations or any formal diplomacy after Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Obama-era Iran nuclear accord and reinstituted a series of crippling sanctions.