Iran has accused the Trump Administration of pushing “big lies” over its nuclear program and the January uprising against the Iranian regime, which saw security forces kill, by some estimates, tens of thousands of protesters.
Esmail Baghaei, spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, claimed the U.S. has engaged in a “disinformation and misinformation” campaign against Iran.
“Whatever they’re alleging in regards to Iran’s nuclear program, Iran’s ballistic missiles, and the number of casualties during January’s unrest is simply the repetition of ‘big lies,’” he said Wednesday morning in a statement issued via social media. “Professional liars are good at creating the ‘illusion of truth.’”
Baghaei’s comments came after President Donald Trump, during his record-breaking State of the Union address Tuesday night, accused Iran of restarting “sinister ambitions” in relation to nuclear weaponry.
“They were warned to make no future attempts to rebuild their weapons program, in particular nuclear weapons… They want to start all over again and are at this moment pursuing their sinister ambitions,” the U.S. President claimed.
Trump did not offer any evidence pertaining to this, nor did he elaborate on why the U.S. is under the impression that Iran has moved to restart its nuclear weapons program.
Framing Iran as a direct threat, Trump continued: “They’ve already developed missiles that can threaten Europe and our bases overseas and they’re working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America.”
He appeared to indicate the U.S. would consider taking military action if Tehran does not abandon said ambitions.
Trump, who has recently increased the presence of U.S. military in the Middle East region amid heightened tensions with Iran, went on to hail the power of the U.S. forces.
“We are in negotiations with them [Iran]. They want to make a deal, but we haven’t heard those secret words, ‘We will never have a nuclear weapon,’” Trump said. “No nation should ever doubt America’s resolve.. We have the most powerful military on earth.”
In June last year, the U.S. joined Israel in launching strikes on three key Iranian nuclear sites—an action Trump said had “completely and totally obliterated” the targeted facilities.
Those strikes were referenced by Trump earlier this year, when he warned Iran of a possible U.S. military invention amid reports that the Iranian regime was killing masses of protesters who had initially gathered to demonstrate against an economy in freefall.
Trump spoke of the protests during his State of the Union address. “They’ve killed at least 32,000 protesters in their own country—they shot a lot of them and hung them,” he said, referring to the regime as “terrible people.”
In late January, local health officials told TIME that the protest death toll could top 30,000. TIME has been unable to independently verify these figures.
Iranian officials rejected the most recent figures put forward by Trump.
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s parliament speaker, referred to it as a “false” claim in an address early Wednesday. “Don’t make wrong decisions based on false information,” he reportedly stated, adding that Iran is “not looking for weapons.”
The rebuttal from Iran comes one day before its country’s negotiators are set to meet with American officials in Geneva Thursday for a third round of talks on Iran’s nuclear program.
The opposing sides met last week, where they made “a little bit of progress” but remain “very far apart on some issues,” according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
