TEHRAN, Feb. 11 (Xinhua) -- Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Tuesday that the United States has been unable to defeat Iranians through "tough" sanctions over the past two years.
"America wants to weaken Iranians; they want our nation to surrender," Rouhani said in a celebration marking the 41st anniversary of the victory of the Islamic Revolution.
The United States is against the Iranians' choice of their fate, he said, adding that "however, the nation, the government, and the armed forces will resist the U.S. pressures."
Over the past months, the Iranian government has managed to overcome most of the problems stemmed from U.S. sanctions, he added.
Hundreds of thousands of Iranians attended nationwide rallies on Tuesday.
In different cities, people swarmed to the streets, chanting anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli slogans. In Tehran, the demonstrators burned the U.S. and Israeli flags.
They carried images of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, late founder of the Islamic republic, and his successor and the incumbent supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as well as Qassem Soleimani, senior Iranian commander who was recently assassinated by the United States.
Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani had called for mass turnout to mark the anniversary of the revolution and condemn the "hostile" moves of the United States against the Islamic republic.
The 1979 Revolution in Iran toppled the U.S.-backed Shah regime of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and brought the country under the leadership of Khomeini, an event seen as a turning point in Iran's history.
