Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Iranian supreme leader, accused the United States on Wednesday of trying to “derail” the Egyptian revolution that ended the 30-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak.
“Of course, the U.S. is trying to derail the Egyptian people’s move to convince them to return home with a number of minor achievements,” Mr. Khamenei told a crowd in Tehran, according to the semiofficial Fars News Agency.
“But these tricks and traps are unlikely to yield a result in the face of a nation which has been awakened and has come to know its power and influence.”
Mr. Khamenei has called the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, as well as other protest movements in the Arab world, part of an “Islamic awakening” inspired by Iran’s own 1979 revolution.
His regime, however, has sought in recent days to crush the revival of the anti-government “Green Movement,” which was spawned by the disputed June 2009 election that returned President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power.
On Tuesday, President Obama assailed the Iranian regime for hypocrisy.
“You know, I find it ironic that you’ve got the Iranian regime pretending to celebrate what happened in Egypt, when in fact they have acted in direct contrast to what happened in Egypt by gunning down and beating people who were trying to express themselves peacefully in Iran,” Mr. Obama said.
• Ben Birnbaum can be reached at 138247@example.com.
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