By Patrick Goodenough

(CNSNews.com) September 21, 2016 – Iranian President Hasan Rouhani should be treated as an international pariah, not an honored guest, former Sen. Joe Lieberman said at a rally outside United Nations headquarters on Tuesday, a day before Rouhani is scheduled to speak there.
Lieberman compared the Iranian regime to that led by Kim Jong-un in North Korea, saying both were “brutal” and totalitarian and spend “much too much money building weapons to threaten to their neighbors.”
The U.N. should treat Rouhani as it would treat Kim Jong-un, he said.
“The fact is that the regime in Iran has more blood on its hands than even the regime in Pyongyang, so we say to the United Nations: Don’t be fooled by Rouhani’s smile.”
Lieberman said Rouhani was “a puppet” for supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
The former Democratic senator from Connecticut, now chairman of United Against a Nuclear Iran – a bipartisan lobby group opposed to the nuclear agreement negotiated with Tehran – said Iran’s behavior has worsened over the nine months since that deal was implemented.
“Remember that people in the United States government and all the governments of the P5+1 [negotiating group] said this agreement would moderate the government in Iran, would change its behavior, would bring it to be a member of the civilized community of nations,” he said.
“Look at the record, there’s absolutely no change in the behavior of the regime in Tehran; it is in fact worse in every way.”
Lieberman said the regime was using the money it has received from the U.S. and others, strengthening its grip on the country and suppressing the rights of the Iranian people, while supporting terrorists and sponsoring aggression in the region.
The only way to change the regime, he said, “is for the people of Iran to rise up and oust” it.
“This regime under Khamenei, the IRGC, Rouhani, has violated all of those principles of the United Nations Charter,” Lieberman said. “It is why Rouhani should not be greeted as an honored guest, but as an international pariah, but as a violator of the principles of the United Nations.”
Tuesday’s rally, organized by the Organization of Iranian American Communities, called for justice for the victims of the mass executions of dissidents almost 30 years ago, and also highlighted the regime’s current use of the death penalty. (Almost 1,000 executions were reported to have taken place in 2015, a 20-year high.)