Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Tuesday his country would boost its military might to deter the US, as Iran showcased a new fighter jet.
"Why does the United States not attack us? Because of our power, because it knows the consequences,” Rouhani said in a speech broadcast live on state television ahead of Wednesday's National Defense Industry Day.
"We should make ourselves ready to fight against the military powers that want to take over our territory and our resources," he added.
Rouhani compared the sanctions on Iran with the US trade war with China and its new tariffs on some imports from Turkey and European countries.
"It's not only us who do not trust America. Today even Europe and China do not trust them; even American allies like Canada have lost their trust," he said.
Reuters said that earlier on Tuesday Rouhani attended a ceremony, broadcast by state TV, that included the fly-past of a new fighter jet called Kowsar, which Iran says is "100-percent indigenously made" and able to carry various weapons and to be used for short aerial support missions.
However, some military experts believe the fighter jet is a carbon copy of an F-5 first produced in the United States in the 1960s.
"It is a natural reaction to the economic difficulties," Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman.
"They are under pressure because of the American sanctions and react by inventing stories," he told reporters in Israel, adding however: "But it should not be taken lightly."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's spokesman for Arab affairs, Ofir Gendleman, went further and tweeted that the aircraft unveiled Tuesday by Iran was an old American model.
"The Iranian regime unveils the Kowsar aircraft and pretends that it is '100 percent indigenously made'... but I immediately saw that it is a very old American military plane... of the F-5 type," he wrote.
