Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Photo: Reuters / Arif Hudaverdi Yaman.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has launched another conspiracy-theory laden attack on US policy toward his country, claiming that the Trump administration’s rhetorical barbs against the Islamic Republic were “written by Zionists word for word.”

In a speech on Tuesday night in the Iranian province of West Azerbaijan, Rouhani — a key supporter of the 2015 nuclear deal negotiated by the former Obama administration — stated that “current US actions against the Iranian nation are not just war and sanctions, but a crime against humanity.”

The Iranian president also alleged that when he last visited New York, “a well-known world leader told me that in his meeting with [Trump] the previous day, the US president had told him not to help Iran for just three months, and there would be no Islamic Republic.”

Rouhani said he responded by telling his interlocutor, “Iran is more united and integrated than at any other time.”

Rouhani said two groups — “extremists” and “Zionists” — were dominating America’s toughened stance towards Iran.

The “Zionists” were a group whose “words and sentences we can distinguish,” Rouhani said.

Rouhani’s statements this week echoed another hardline speech he delivered earlier this month, in which he said that “animosity” towards the JCPOA, the technical name for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, was “particular to Zionists, regional reactionaries, and American hard-liners.”

Added Rouhani: “In such conditions, Zionism, the reactionaries and internal groups in the US, especially [pro-Israel lobbying organization] AIPAC, put pressure on the government to withdraw from the JCPOA.”