Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami said the US withdrawal from Iraq, the anti-capitalism “Occupy” movements, Palestine’s UNESCO membership and the fall of US-backed dictators in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt are the four signs heralding the end of US superpower status. He described ousted Libyan dictator Moammar Qadhdhafi as having ruled with full American support.
Ayatollah Khatami touched on the recent anti-capitalism protests in the US where, he said, 99 percent of the people are protesting against the one percent who are corporate owners. He asked how the US could claim to be involved in global management when American authorities cannot even govern their own country, conflating democratic opposition with chaos and non-governance.
He said the recent US claim that Tehran was involved in the plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington is “so un-intelligent that no rational mind would believe it.”
He said, “Based on a recent poll, more than 60 percent of the people in the world see this scenario as a lie by US authorities.” The Iran Times has not seen any poll yet on this topic and Khatami did not name any specific poll.
He said the US government “is now implicitly issuing assassination orders,” a reference to testimony last month in a US congressional committee advocating assassinations of Iranian officials. That proposal was aired by a retired general, not by any official of the US government, but that point has been ignored in Iranian media coverage.
Khatami pointed to what he called the US history of committing crimes against humanity and said the nuclear bombing of Japan would never be forgotten by the world.
“Siding with the Zionist regime against Palestinians and giving the green light for atrocities to be committed in Bahrain are all among the US crimes against humanity,” he said. Actually, the Obama Administration has been publicly critical of the actions of the Bahraini government against Shia protesters. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeated the criticism as recently as eight days before Khatami claimed the US supported the Bahraini repression.
Khatami said there is evidence showing Bahraini women, doctors and citizens are being tortured in jail and that the onus of these crimes would be on the US. He did not suggest that Iranian support for the Syrian government made Iran responsible for the more than 3,000 deaths there reported by the United Nations. The death toll in Bahrain is 34.
Khatami warned the Al Saud and Al Khalifa ruling families in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain to remember that a fate similar to that of dictators like Saddam Hussein and Moammar Qadhdhafi would befall them if they continue committing crimes against their people.