US President Donald Trump slammed on Friday Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei after his harsh criticism of Washington in a Friday prayers sermon in Tehran.
“The so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ of Iran, who has not been so Supreme lately, had some nasty things to say about the United States and Europe,” Trump said in a tweet.
“Their economy is crashing, and their people are suffering. He should be very careful with his words!”
In his sermon, Khamenei said Iran’s missile strikes on US targets in Iraq showed it had divine support in delivering a “slap on the face” to a world power.
Making the main weekly sermon in Tehran for the first time since 2012, with Iran and its clerical rulers under pressure at home and abroad, Khamenei also said that US sanctions imposed in a row over its nuclear program would not make Iran yield.
The sermon was delivered after Iran’s rulers faced days of often violent protests after the military admitted to mistakenly shooting down an airliner in the tense hours after the missile strikes, which were in turn launched in retaliation for the US killing on Jan. 3 of top Iranian commander, Qassem Soleimani.
US President Donald Trump, who pulled Washington out of a nuclear deal with Iran in 2018 and ratcheted up tension by reimposing US sanctions, had ordered the drone strike that killed Soleimani, who built up proxy militias across the region.
Addressing the nuclear deal, Khamenei said that three European states who were party to the pact could not be trusted, and their actions to put pressure on Iran would not work.
Britain, France and Germany triggered this week a formal dispute mechanism in the agreement, which could lead to UN sanctions being reimposed.
