“What we told people was not contrary to reality, but we did not tell part of the truth to people,” Rouhani said at his last Cabinet meeting as president. However, during his tenure, Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard mistakenly shot down a commercial airliner and killed 176 people onboard in January 2020, which the government refused for days to acknowledge until Western nations went public with their suspicions. He pointed to the country's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, which saw Iran agree to limit its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. However, that deal now sits in tatters after then-President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the accord in May 2018. The president said that while Iran had plans to upgrade its armed forces after the expiration of a U.N. arms embargo in October 2020, it couldn't due to its financial woes.

Source: ABC News August 01, 2021 08:15 UTC