Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the United States is a failure and referred to the nation, as he has for decades, as the “Great Satan” during his annual Eid al-Fitr prayers in Tehran on Friday morning.
“Although the powers keep trying (to undermine Iran’s power), they always face defeat,” Khamenei said of the United States, according to Iran’s state-run Tasnim News Agency.
Khamenei reportedly delivered the remarks at Tehran’s Mosalla (Grand Prayer Grounds).
Referring to President Donald Trump’s acknowledgement in March that that United States essentially wasted $7 trillion in the West Asia wars with Syria and other parts of the Middle East, Khamenei said, “This confession proves that the Great Satan has not achieved its goals despite all its efforts, and henceforth, however much they spend in this region, once again, they will not be able to reach their goals.”
Khamenei said this amounted to America’s defeat in the region.
In March, Trump said, “We spent USD 7 trillion in the Middle East. We’d build a school, they’d blow it up. We’d build it again, they’d blow it up. We’d build it again — hasn’t been blown up yet, but it will be. But, if we want a school in Ohio to fix the windows, you can’t get the money. If you want a school in Pennsylvania or Iowa to get federal money, you can’t get the money.”
His remarks were mirrored with tweets from his Twitter account:
Iran has spent far more on foreign wars and propping up enemies of the West than America has.
The widespread December 28 protests throughout Iran were everyday Iranians reacting to and objecting the Iranian regime spending billions of dollars annually on foreign wars and to prop up Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.
In January 2017, Iran News Update reported:
In June 2015, a spokeswoman for UN envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura said to Bloomberg the body estimates Iran to spend an annual minimum of $6 billion in Syria. Nadim Shehadi, the director of the Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies at Tufts University, said that his research puts the actual number at $15 billion annually, even at a time where Iran’s banks were cut off from the global financial system.
He also took the opportunity to rant against Israel.
“The Zionist regime was founded based on falsehood,” Khamenei said. “They have forcefully and by means of coercion, threat and armed forces, expelled a historical nation from their own country. Is it possible to eliminate #Palestine from the historical-geographical memory of the world?!”
He added his long-held belief that the “Zionist regime,” or Israel, should be eliminated and said, “The #ZionistRegime will not last. All historical experiences imply that with absolute certainty. Undoubtedly the Zionist regime will perish in the not-so-far future.”
Adelle Nazarian is a politics and national security reporter for Breitbart News. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.