"A certain government kills a journalist in a certain country, and while condemning that killing the president of another country brands us terrorists, that's bizarre, isn’t it?" tweeted an Iranian in response to remarks by US President Donald Trump following his Nov. 20 statement on the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

"They are a terrorist nation right now," Trump told reporters upon his departure to Florida Nov. 20, only hours after he issued a statement meant to address the CIA findings on the role of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the murder of the dissident journalist. Trump started off that statement by lambasting Iran's involvement in the Yemen conflict, only briefly touching upon whether the young prince had ordered the killing: "Maybe he did and maybe he didn't!"

A Nov. 21 article on IRNA — the official news agency reflecting the views of President Hassan Rouhani's government — interpreted the statement as a blatant expression of support for a criminal. "Trump's efforts to help the Saudi government come clean from the Khashoggi affair and … mislead the world public opinion are desperate and only doomed to failure for both the culprit and its supporter," the news agency wrote.

Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was among the first to respond. "Perhaps we’re also responsible for the California fires, because we didn’t help rake the forests — just like the Finns do?" he wrote on Twitter. But Zarif focused on Trump's official statement and not the interview in which he named Iran a terrorist nation. This interview has reignited flames of anger among ordinary Iranians.