Iran’s supreme leader defiant in face of ‘weak’ nuclear accord countries
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in first sermon in eight years, lashes out as UN sanctions look likely to be reimposed
IN HIS first sermon for eight years, Iran’s supreme leader yesterday said that Britain and other European states who were party to a nuclear pact were “American lackeys” who “cannot be trusted”.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told thousands of worshippers gathered in Tehran that the UK, France and Germany were “weak”, after the co-signatories to the 2015 accord triggered a formal dispute mechanism in the agreement, which could lead to UN sanctions being reimposed.
Iran has gradually scaled back its commitments under the pact in retaliation to the US’S withdrawal in 2018 and its reimposition of sanctions that have crippled the country’s economy.
“I told you after US withdrawal that the E3 are just paying lip service, and telling lies,” he said. “I said I don’t trust them. Now you see they’re just pawns of the US. They’re trying to bring Iran to its knees. The US, which was your master, failed to do so, let alone you tiny ones.”
The United States has threatened to impose a 25 per cent tariff on imports of European cars if EU governments continue to back the nuclear deal, according to Annegret Kramp-karrenbauer, the German defence minister.
Mr Khamenei, who has held the country’s top office since 1989 and has the final say on all major decisions, addressed the nation following the US killing of Qassim Soleimani, the Revolutionary Guard general.
Leading Friday prayers in the capital – which the ayatollah last did in 2012 – is a symbolically significant act usually reserved for times when Iran’s highest authority wishes to deliver an important message
Striking a defiant tone, he said Donald Trump, the US president, was a “clown” who pretended to support the Iranian people, but would push a poisonous dagger into their backs if he could.
He also accused Iran’s “enemies”, a term that usually refers to Washington and its allies, of trying to use Iran’s accidental shooting down of a Ukrainian airliner to overshadow a public show of grief following the death of Soleimani. He called the downing of the Ukrainian airliner a
“bitter” accident yesterday, but said it should not overshadow the “sacrifice” of a top commander killed in a US drone strike.
“The plane crash ... burned through our heart,” Khamenei said. “But some tried to ... portray it in a way to forget the great martyrdom and sacrifice,” of Major General Soleimani, the head of the foreign operations arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
He went on: “Our enemies were as happy about the plane crash as we were sad ... happy that they found something to question the guards, the armed forces, the system.”
Tehran last week admitted it had accidentally downed the Ukrainian airliner when it was on high alert after strikes against US targets in Iraq in retaliation for Soleimani’s killing. The tragedy killed 176 people, most of them Iranians and Canadians. Many Iranians in exile noted that Mr Khameini did not offer any condolences to the victims of the crash, which they said showed a lack of respect.
Praising Soleimani, Mr Khamenei said his actions beyond Iran’s borders were in the service of the “security” of the nation and that the people were in favour of “firmness” and “resistance” in the face of enemies.
“The few hundred who insulted the picture of General Soleimani – are they the people of Iran? Or this million-strong crowd in the streets?” he said in an apparent reference to the reported tearing down of a portrait of the slain commander by protesters in Tehran a few days after hundreds of thousands turned out for his funeral.