The first meeting of Expediency Council, a 44-member state arbitration body, was held under its newly-appointed chairman, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi. In his address to the body, Ayatollah Shahroudi described the speech delivered by US President Donald Trump to the United Nations on Tuesday as "cheap and worthless". He noted that "[Trump] has shown he has an unstable and conflicting character", IRNA reported. "While during his presidential campaign [Trump] had said Daesh had been created by his political rivals [from the Democratic Party], in his recent address, and in stark contrast, he accused Iran of supporting terrorism," he said, using an Arabic acronym for the self-styled Islamic State terror group. As a candidate, Trump had described then US president, Barack Obama, as "the founder of IS", and said his then presidential rival Hillary Clinton was the "co-founder" of IS. In a decree on August 15, Leader of Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei appointed Ayatollah Shahroudi as the new head of the top body. Ayatollah Shahroudi replaced the council's late chairman, former president Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani who died in January at the age of 82.
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