The Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during an audience in Tehran, on September 25, 2024. (Credit: AFP/ KHAMENEI.IR.)
Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Saturday urged the United States to leave the Middle East, as the two countries are engaged in indirect discussions about Iran's nuclear program.
"With the determination of the nations of the region (the Middle East), America must leave the region, and it will leave," he said in a speech in Tehran before Iranian teachers.
Negotiations have been ongoing under the mediation of Oman between Iran and the United States since April 12, aiming to conclude a new agreement to regulate Tehran's nuclear program. These negotiations represent the highest level of engagement between the two parties since Washington withdrew in 2018 from the international agreement on Iran's nuclear program concluded three years earlier.
On Saturday, Khamenei also criticized the support the United States provides to Israel in its war in Gaza against the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas. "Trump claimed he wanted to use force to achieve peace, but he lied," Khamenei said, referring to the line taken by the American administration. "He, American officials, and governments have used power to support the massacre in Gaza," he added. "The Zionist regime (Israel, editor's note), which is a dangerous and deadly cancerous tumor in this region, must and will be uprooted," he stressed.
During his visit to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, Trump, for his part, criticized Iranian leaders and Iran's regional role. "Iranian leaders have focused on stealing the wealth of their people to fund terrorism and bloodshed abroad," he said at an investment forum. "Some of Trump's remarks during his tour in the Gulf "are not even worth responding to," Khamenei said on Saturday, without elaborating. "The level of these comments is so low that they are a source of shame for himself and a source of embarrassment for the American people," he denounced.
On Thursday in Qatar, the U.S. president said that Washington and Tehran were getting closer to an agreement on Iran's nuclear program. The next day, he urged Iran to "move" on this issue "or something bad will happen." The American government announced this week sanctions against individuals and companies based in Iran accused of "helping the Iranian regime locally produce" intercontinental ballistic missiles.