Iran’s supreme leader said on Wednesday that his country’s hatred for the US runs deep and differences between the two nations go beyond a “few political issues.”
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s comments on state-run television less than a week before the US presidential elections were seen as a signal that a thaw in US-Iran relations was not expected no matter who wins Tuesday’s US election.
Khamenei said the hatred was rooted in 50 years of US intervention in Iran’s domestic affairs and hostility toward Tehran.
“The hatred of the Iranian nation is deep-seated. The reason is the various conspiracies by the US government against the Iranian people and government in the past 50 years,” Khamenei said.
He was addressing a group of students in Tehran days ahead of the 29th anniversary of the 1979 storming of the US Embassy in Tehran by militant students.
Iran blames the CIA for helping topple the elected government of Mohammad Mosaddeq in the 1950s and blames the US for openly supporting the late Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi against the 1979 Islamic revolution that led to the collapse of the dynasty.
Iranians also condemn Washington for arming and supporting then-Iraqi president Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war from 1980 to 1988.
“This dispute [with America] goes further than differences of opinion over a few political issues,” the leader said.
Iranian political analyst Saeed Leilaz said Khamenei’s address sent a clear message that he will have to approve any efforts for reconciliation with the US.
“Khamenei wants the US and Iranian political factions to know that he will be in control of any efforts to politically restore their relations,” Leilaz said.
Leilaz said that Khamenei was also telling Iran’s political factions not to get excited should Senator Barack Obama win the US presidential race.
Iran’s government has refused to publicly side with any of the US candidates, but Parliamentary Speaker Ali Larijani said last week that Obama seemed “more rational” than rival Senator John McCain.
Obama, a Democrat, has called for direct diplomacy with Iranian leaders that he says would give the US more credibility to press for tougher sanctions — though Obama now says he’s not sure hardline Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the right person to meet with.
McCain, a Republican, has said he favors tougher sanctions against Iran and opposes direct high-level talks with Ahmadinejad.
The US and Iran have had no diplomatic relations since the 1979 embassy storming.
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
Three sisters from Ohio who inherited a dime kept in a bank vault for more than 40 years knew it had some value, but they had no idea just how much until just a few years ago. The extraordinarily rare coin, struck by the US Mint in San Francisco in 1975, could bring more than US$500,000, said Ian Russell, president of GreatCollections, which specializes in currency and is handling an online auction that ends next month. What makes the dime depicting former US president Franklin D. Roosevelt so valuable is a missing “S” mint mark for San Francisco, one of just two
RSS