Iranian officials call latest U.S. sanctions ‘desperate’

Iranian officials said Friday that the Obama administration’s decision to sanction eight high-ranking security officials for human rights abuses demonstrated Washington’s complicity with opposition activists and showed America as desperate.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday unveiled travel and financial restrictions against eight Iranian officials allegedly responsible for the brutal months-long crackdown against protestors decrying alleged fraud in the 2009 reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“With this measure, America intends to boost the morale of the anti-revolutionary groups,” national police chief Gen. Esmail Ahmadi-Moghaddam told worshipers in a pre-Friday prayer sermon speech broadcast live on radio. “American officials are so desperate these days that they cling to any flimsy branch in order to save themselves.”

Ahmadinejad says Mideast to expel US with ‘kick in butt’

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Sunday that Middle East nations will expel the United States from the region with a “kick in the butt,” as he launched a vitriolic tirade against Iran’s arch-foes.

“They have such nerve to threaten us and say all options are on the table. May the undertaker take you, your tables… away as you have dragged the world in mud,” the hardliner was quoted as saying.

“If you don’t leave the region, you should know that soon the nations of the region will expel you with a kick in the butt,” he said in some of his harshest anti-US comments in recent times.