Iran's supreme leader says Europe 'cannot be trusted' in rare Friday prayers address
Iran’s Supreme Leader, leading a sermon in Iran for the first time in eight years, said Britain and other European states who were party to a nuclear pact were “American pawns” who “cannot be trusted”.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told thousands of worshippers that the UK, France and Germany “cannot be trusted”, after the co-signatories to the 2015 accord triggered a formal dispute mechanism in the agreement, which could lead to UN sanctions being reimposed.
The countries, known as the E3, triggered a dispute resolution earlier this week in response to Iran’s violations of the terms of the agreement.
Iran has gradually scaled back its commitments under the pact in retaliation to US’s withdrawal in 2018 and its reimposition of sanctions that have crippled the country’s economy.
Khamenei, who has held the country’s top office since 1989 and has the final say on all major decisions, last delivered a Friday sermon in February 2012, addressed the nation following the US killing of celebrated Revolutionary Guard general Qassem Soleimani.
“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. US, which was your master failed to do so, let alone you tiny ones.”
The ayatollah 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 accidental downing of a Ukrainian airliner a “bitter” tragedy on Friday but said it should not overshadow the “sacrifice” of a top commander killed in a US drone strike.
“The plane crash was a bitter accident, it 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 Qasem Soleimani, the head of the foreign operations arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
“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.”
Iran admitted last week it accidentally downed a Ukrainian airliner when it was 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.
The accidental downing triggered scattered protests in Tehran and other cities.
Praising Soleimani, Khamenei said his actions beyond Iran’s borders were in the service of the “security” of the nation and that the people are in favour of “firmness” and “resistance” in the face of enemies.
He notably did not offer condolences to the victims, most of whom were Iranians or dual nationals.
“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 reported tearing down of a portrait of the dead commander by protesters in Tehran a few days after hundreds of thousands turned out for his funeral.
Khameini accused the US of “lying” in its expressions of support for the Iranian people.
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He said that even if they were with the people, “it is to stab them with their poison dagger”.