Ayatollah Ali Khamenei dismissed Donald Trump's warning to Iran to stop its missile tests, saying the new U.S. president had shown the "real face" of American corruption.

In his first speech since Trump's inauguration, Iran's supreme leader called on Iranians to respond to Trump's "threats" on Feb. 10, the anniversary of Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution. Trump had tried but failed to frighten Iranians, Khamenei said.

"We are thankful to [President Trump] for making our life easy as he showed the real face of America," Khamenei told a meeting of military commanders in Tehran, according to his website. The White House has said the last week's missile test was not a direct breach of Iran's 2015 nuclear pact with six world powers, but that it "violates the spirit of that."

On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly promised to tear up the nuclear deal. While his Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, has not called for an outright rejection of the accord, he has suggested a "full review" of it. Trump responded to a Jan. 29 Iranian missile test by saying "Iran is playing with fire" and slapping fresh sanctions on individuals and entities, some of them linked to Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards. A U.N. Security Council resolution underpinning the pact urges Iran to refrain from testing missiles designed to be able to carry nuclear warheads, but imposes no obligation. Under the accord, Iran agreed to curb its nuclear program in exchange for relief from some U.S., European and U.N. economic sanctions. Critics of Iran said the deal emboldened Tehran to increase its involvement in wars in Arab countries, a charge Tehran denies.