In a letter to the “Youth of the West”, Iran’s Supreme Leader has used the Islamic State’s deadly attacks in Paris on November 13 to launch another high-profile denunciation of the US and its European partners.

The Supreme Leader’s website and Iranian media disseminated Ayatollah Khamenei’s message, published in English and French, after a letter in January which enjoined youth to learn about Islam : “The bitter events brought about by blind terrorism in France have once again, moved me to speak to you young people.”

Khamenei told the Western youth that they should “know that the insecurity and strain that you experienced during the recent events, differs from the pain that the people of Iraq, Yemen, Syria and Afghanistan have been experiencing for many years”. He then embarked on his criticism of Western governments:

There are very few people who are uninformed about the role of the United States of America in creating, nurturing and arming al-Qaeda, the Taliban and their inauspicious successors. Besides this direct support, the overt and well-known supporters of takfiri terrorism — despite having the most backward political systems- are standing arrayed as allies of the west while the most pioneering, brightest and most dynamic democrats in the region are suppressed mercilessly. The prejudiced response of the West to the awakening movement in the Islamic world is an illustrative example of the contradictory western policies.

After a long passage on the “state terrorism of Israel” and “military invasions of the Islamic world”, Khamenei tried to rally young people to his cause, even as he derided their “Western culture” and blamed it for the Islamic State:

Dear youth! I have the hope that you — now or in the future — can change this mentality corrupted by duplicity, a mentality whose highest skill is hiding long-term goals and adorning malevolent objectives….

You are the ones that have to uncover the apparent layers of your own society and untie and disentangle the knots and resentments.

Iranian State TV broke into regular programming to feature the Supreme Leader’s initiative, with “analysts” from Australia and website Veterans Today as well as commentators in Tehran supporting the line of attack on the West and Saudi Arabia: