Khamenei says that Iran is not angry with the Europeans: With countries that do not blindly follow America, we can cooperate

Photo: EPA

Iran's supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said that Iran is not angry with the Europeans and that it is ready to cooperate with "countries that do not blindly follow the United States."

In a speech in the holy city of Mashhad on the first day of the new year according to the Iranian calendar, Khamenei criticized America, accusing it of fueling the protest movement that has rocked Iran after the death of the young Mahsa Amini in police custody last September.

"The West put pressure on Iran to be isolated, but the opposite happened. Our relations with the West have weakened, but our ties with Asia have strengthened 100 percent, and establishing strong relations with Latin America and Africa is also on the agenda," he said to several thousand people at the Imam Reza shrine.

"However, we are not angry with the Europeans and we are ready to cooperate with all European countries that do not blindly follow American policy," he added.

European Union member states and the United Kingdom have in recent months criticized the crackdown on protests in Iran that began after the death of Mahsa Amini, 22, on September 16. An Iranian woman of Kurdish origin has died after being arrested by moral police in Tehran for violating strict dress codes.

According to authorities, hundreds of people, including members of the security forces, have died in those protests, which have subsided in recent weeks. As in January, Khamenei stressed that the authorities had succeeded in defeating a plot that sparked the riots involving "a small number of Iranians".

"Iran's enemies want regime change and the introduction of a Western-style fake democracy to control the country and rob it of its resources," he said.

Khamenei also stressed that Iran does not interfere in the conflict in Ukraine. Some countries accuse Tehran of supporting Russia, primarily by supplying it with drones.

"We are in no way participating in that war started by the United States, whose arms factories profit the most," he said.

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