Speaking on the anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran’s Supreme Leader has rejected any cooperation in the region with the US.
Ayatollah Khamenei said, “It’s impossible to trust the promise of arrogants and speeches they make in private meetings”. Declaring that the “insatiable appetite of global arrogance has never ceased to covet Iran, which is a great & rich country located at a critical crossroads”, he called for resistance and defiance:
World hypocrite powers will retreat only if you, the Iranian nation, gain such a power & achieve such a progress that cut off their hopes.
— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) June 4, 2015
Last June, after the Islamic State’s advance in northern and eastern Iraq, President Rouhani sought cooperation with the US to repel the offensive, but he was overruled by Khamenei. However, the prospect continued with the campaign to retake the Iraqi city of Tikrit in April, and it has been given further impetus by the Islamic State’s capture Ramadi, the capital of one of Iraq’s largest province, last month.
Maintaining his firm line, Khamenei criticized Middle Eastern countries, including Saudi Arabia, for being “under the auspices of world bullying powers and the US” and compared them to the Islamic State:
#Islam of #ISIS &on other hand an Islam which is indifferent toward #Zionism & US and follow them are cut from the same cloth.
— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) June 4, 2015
The Supreme Leader then used the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s — in which the Reagan Administration tried to sell weapons to the Islamic Republic to fund the overthrow of the government of Nicaragua — to issue his rejection of any discussions with Washington:
Ronald Reagan who was a powerful man wrote to @IRKhomeini & sent his men but Imam #Khomeini was indifferent & ignored his promise.
— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) June 4, 2015
Khamenei extended his comparison with the Islamic State to condemn the US as beyond salvation:
We are opposed to brutal acts of #ISIS in Iraq & Syria as much as the oppressive behavior of Federal police of the US; they’re all the same.
— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) June 4, 2015
