Iran’s Khamenei on Riots: ‘By God’s Grace, the U.S. Has Been Disgraced’

In this picture released by an official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leade
Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP

The Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, weighed in on the violent riots erupting through the United States on Wednesday, beaming, “By God’s favor and grace, the U.S. has been disgraced.”

Khamenei, reportedly speaking at an event commemorating the death of his predecessor Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, also compared the death of Minnesota resident George Floyd at the hands of a police officer to America’s alleged crimes while fighting jihadists tied to the Iranian regime in places like Syria and Iraq.

Floyd’s death has triggered nationwide protests against racism in local police departments. The protests have also attracted violent leftists, who have engaged in extensive arson, looting, and assorted vandalism. Some have severely injured business owners and passersby in major cities, allegedly in Floyd’s name. Much of the damage occurred in underprivileged communities.

“This is what the nations that have been the victims of U.S.’s oppressive usurpation want to say from the bottom of their hearts,” Khamenei said of “I can’t breathe,” Floyd’s last words as he was killed.

“By God’s favor and grace, the U.S. has been disgraced as a result of its own actions. Their management of the [Chinese] Coronavirus brought them to disgrace, and their weak handling of the situation caused them to have several times as many casualties as other countries. The American people feel embarrassed and ashamed of their government,” Khamenei declared.

Iran has experienced one of the worst local outbreaks of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, a product of Khamenei handing control of the public health emergency to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a terrorist organization. Despite specializing in deadly explosives and attacks on civilians, Khamenei tasked the IRGC with developing a vaccine against the Chinese coronavirus, a claim made in March that has so far yielded no evidence of any vaccine development.

At press time, Iran has one of the highest Chinese coronavirus death rates in the world, logging over 8,000 deaths due to the virus out of over 160,000 cases total. The National Council of Resistance of Iran, the country’s largest dissident group, has documented closer to 50,000 deaths on account of the pandemic in the country, citing on-the-ground sources.

“A police officer putting his knee on a black man’s neck and pushing until he dies shows the nature of the American government,” Khamenei concluded.

Khamenei also applauded Khomenei, who launched the radical Islamic revolution that imposed the current violent regime in 1979, for having “humiliated” the United States.

“Imam Khomeini proved that superpowers can be broken and beaten. You saw how the USSR collapsed, and you can see the status of the U.S. today,” Khamenei asserted. “What is being witnessed in U.S. cities today is a result of realities that had always been kept concealed. However, today these have been revealed leading to the disgrace of the U.S. government.”

“They kill people and yet claim they advocate human rights. Was not the black man whom you murdered a human being?” Khamenei asserted.

Khamenei’s speech occurred a day after Iranian health workers took the streets to protest the regime’s poor treatment of them while fighting the coronavirus pandemic. The protesters are demanding more pay for the difficult labor before them. Some were dismissed from their jobs in the aftermath of the pandemic, protesting being unemployed after taking a high-risk job for the nation.

Iranians have been protesting their regime consistently for years. During the Trump administration, more have taken the streets in response to the country’s worsening economic situation, the product of the government squandering millions in sanctions relief from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or Iran nuclear deal, which stopped coming in when Trump renounced the deal. Tehran’s decision to invest in Hezbollah and proxy fighters in Iran and Syria resulted in severe food and water shortages and unsustainably high prices for basic goods, resulting in multiple waves of protests in 2017.

Other protests that routinely occur are organized by women who seek to appear in public while showing their hair. It is illegal to be out in public without a hijab in Iran. Iranian state security routinely brutalizes women who partake in protests often consisting exclusively of appearing in public without a hijab.

Protesting the Iranian regime can result in the death penalty. Islamic regime troops regularly respond to peaceful protests by opening fire.

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