Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei led tens led tens of thousands of Iranians to scream “death to America” and “death to Israel chants Saturday, five days after the United States and five other world powers reached agreement on a nuclear deal.
Khamenei did not specifically criticize or praise the agreement, leading American pundits to conclude that he was just letting off steam to please the hard-liners., and so what if President Barack Obama hailed an agreement with a country that loves to hate?
Khamenei spoke on national television on Saturday, during the Eid a-Ftir celebrations concluding the daily fasts in the Muslim month of Ramadan, and poured salt on the fresh wound President Barack Obama has suffered in his weak defense of the deal.
Khamenei told throngs in Tehran:
Our policy regarding the arrogant U.S. government will not change. We don’t have any negotiations or deal with the U.S. on different issues in the world or the region.
Whether [the deal is] ratified or not, we will not give up on our friends in the region.
And who are his friends? For starters there is Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, who owes his life to Iran for remaining alive, at least for the time being. And then there is Hezbollah, for which ObamaDeal is a multi-billion bonanza for buying even more missiles to aim at Israel and to fund terrorist attacks against Jews around the world.
Khamenei’s appearance dispels reports that he is about to die from cancer. His performance Saturday was at least par for the course in his making President Obama look like a dishrag. Congress may confirm the agreement, but Khamenei is going to embarrass the president as much as possible.
The Supreme Leader of Iran bragged that the United States has no other choice “but to tolerate the spinning of a few thousand centrifuges” in Iran.
President Obama last week admitted that the United States made foreign policy mistakes by backing a coup in 1953 and backing Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in the eight-year with Iran in the 1980s.
The admission gave Khamenei an opening that he stretched, saying:
He [Obama] mentioned two or three points but did not confess to tens of others. I am telling you, you are making a mistake now, in different parts of this region, but especially about the Iranian nation. Wake up, Stop making mistakes. Understand the reality.
Isn’t it interesting that Obama is getting the same message from Israel, Saudi Arabia and more than half of Congress?
Below is a video from CNN of Khamenei’s speech and the hate chants.