Supreme Leader addresses nurses in Tehran via video, July 20, 2020

UPDATE, JULY 31:

In his second blast against the US in two days, the Supreme Leader has denounced an American “crime against the Iranian nation”.

Attributing Iran’s economic difficulties to the Trump Administration’s sanctions, Ayatollah Khamenei said on the occasion of Eid al-Adha,”The sanctions applied by the Americans against the Iranian nation are a crime, and there is no doubt about it.”

He appealed for support and his notion of a self-sufficient Resistance Economy, even as Iranian production, investment, and trade sink and the currency is at a historic low: “The only cure for sanctions is rather relying on domestic capabilities.”

See also Iran Exports to Iraq Drop 40%

Khamenei continued:

Some argue and propagate the idea that if you want to stop the US from bullying, you need to back off. No sir! A person who is accustomed to aggression will come forward if you back off. This is a clear and natural issue. If you accept the US demands, they will raise new demands.

What the US wants is that we totally abandon our nuclear industry, reduce our defensive equipment to one-tenth, and give up our regional power.

Khamenei rejected any negotiations with Washington:

Everyone must pay attention; I have said this for several times, and I have to repeat it, because some either fail to understand or pretend they can’t understand.

If the enemy talks of negotiation, it means “come to the negotiating table and don’t develop missiles’. If you give in to their demands…you’d make yourself defenseless; and if you don’t, you’d have to face the same story: disputes, threats and sanctions again. This is what negotiation means.

He sneered at Donald Trump, “The old guy who is in office in the US apparently took some propaganda advantages of negotiation with North Korea. He wants to use [negotiation with Iran] for his personal gain in elections and elsewhere.”

Khamenei tried again to manipulate the Black Lives Matter marches to his advantage:

Current events in the US are like a fire under ashes that has flamed up. Even if they extinguish it, it will blaze up again and burn down the current US regime, because the politico-economic philosophy of that system is wrong and condemned to destruction.

ORIGINAL ENTRY, JULY 30: Amid economic crisis and regional tension, Iran’s Supreme Leader has called for the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca to “fall on the heads of the US and its dog Israel”.

Ayatollah Khamenei said that while many will be unable to journey to Saudi Arabia become of the Coronavirus pandemic:

Hajj is a maneuver to show off one’s power in the face of the arrogant people who are the center of corruption, oppression, the destruction of the weak, and plunder….

Such a unity that can let out a thunderous cry at the embodiment of Satan – transgressing America – and at its mad dog, the Zionist regime.

Khamenei did not specify a specific arena of conflict with the US, from Iraq to Yemen to Syria and Lebanon, preferring the general declamation, “We regard the presence of the US in West Asia as detrimental to regional nations and as a cause of insecurity, destruction and backwardness for countries.”

He then tried to wear the mantle of the Black Lives Matter marches across America:

Continuing its chest-thumping demonstration of military capability in annual drills, the Revolutionary Guards fired ballistic missiles from underground for the first time on Wednesday.

Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the head of the Guards’ Aerospace Division, announced the test with video showing clouds of dust before missiles rose into the sky.

The Guards also featured their firing of missiles upon a mock-up of a US aircraft carrier.

But the attempted show of strength was dented by ongoing economic problems, with the apparent failure of a $1 billion injection to prop up the historically-low Iranian currency.

The Central Bank put in the funds last wek as the rial sank below 250,000:1 v. the US dollar, a drop of 40% in value since March.

The rial recovered to 210,000:1 but has resumed its plunge. It stands at 236,100 v. the dollar on Thursday afternoon.

See also Iran Government Props Up Currency With $300 Million Injection