Washington: The US ambassador to the UN has urged Iran to “look in the mirror” for the causes of an attack on a military parade that killed 25 on Saturday.
Nikki Haley said Iranian President Hassan Rouhani had “oppressed his people for a long time”.
She was responding to Mr Rouhani’s criticism of the US, in which he blamed it for enabling the attack.
Four gunmen opened fire at Revolutionary Guard troops in the south-western city of Ahvaz on Saturday, killing 25 people including soldiers and civilians watching a commemorative parade.
An anti-government group – Ahvaz National Resistance – and the Islamic State (IS) group both claimed responsibility for the killings.
“He’s got the Iranian people... protesting, every ounce of money that goes into Iran goes into his military, he has oppressed his people for a long time and he needs to look at his own base to figure out where that’s coming from,” Ms Haley told CNN.
“He can blame us all he wants. The thing he’s got to do is look in the mirror.”
Haley said Washington was trying to counter Iranian malign activities in the region as Tehran continued to test ballistic missiles, support terrorism and sell arms.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday US President Donald Trump will wield the gavel in the United Nations Security Council to denounce Iran for its malign regional behaviour.
Trump is able to preside over the 15-member council as the US holds the monthly rotating presidency, which coincides with the annual gathering of world leaders at the UN in New York this week.
The topic of the meeting will be nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction, a broad issue that allows leaders around the horse-shoe table to raise a variety of subjects from North Korea to chemical weapons attacks in Syria and Britain.
However, Trump signaled on Twitter he will zero in on Iran, when he posted: “I will chair a United Nations Security Council meeting on Iran.”