Al-Monitor- Around 6:30 p.m. Sept. 19, Iranians were tuned in, waiting to hear what US President Donald Trump would say in his address to the UN General Assembly with regard to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The 2015 pact resulted in the lifting of nuclear-related sanctions against Iran.


Trump said, “We cannot abide by an agreement if it provides cover for the eventual construction of a nuclear program. … The Iranian government masks a corrupt dictatorship behind the false guise of a democracy. It has turned a wealthy country, with a rich history and culture, into an economically depleted rogue state whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed and chaos.”

The president's harsh words about Iran and his lamentation about the JCPOA — reached between Iran and the P5+1 (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States plus Germany) — went beyond Iranians' already negative expectations. Iranians reacted to the speech by launching the hashtag ShutUPTrump to express their displeasure with his words and stands. One Iranian, Javad Aghaie, tweeted, “I wish that before Trump's speech they had taken an alcohol and drug test so that he wouldn’t talk in such contradictory ways.”

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