Muslims still 'hate America,' Iran says
TEHRAN - Iran's supreme leader dismissed President Obama's speech at Cairo University yesterday, saying the Muslim world continues to "hate America." And he criticized the United States and its allies for asserting that Iran seeks nuclear weapons, which he insisted are forbidden under his country's predominant sect of Islam.
Speaking shortly before Obama delivered his address, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said "beautiful speeches" could not remove the hatred felt in the Muslim world against America.
"People of the Middle East, the Muslim region, and North Africa - people of these regions - hate America from the bottom of their heart," Khamenei said at a gathering to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the father of Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution and Khamenei's predecessor as the predominantly Shi'ite Muslim country's supreme religious leader.
"For a long time, these people have witnessed aggressive actions by America, and that's why they hate them," Khamenei, 69, told a crowd of several thousand supporters in his televised speech. He attributed these feelings to "violence, military intervention, rights violations, and discrimination."
Alluding to Obama's new approach to foreign affairs, he said the administration of President George W. Bush had left an "ill-mannered image" of itself in the world.
Khamenei also denounced Israel as a "cancerous tumor in the heart" of the Islamic world, and he accused the US military of "bombing innocent civilians" in Afghanistan. "What is the difference between this killing and killing by terrorists?" he asked.
Regarding Iran's nuclear program, the main issue of contention between his country and the United States, Khamenei reiterated Tehran's assertions that it seeks only to generate electricity, and he referred to a religious edict, or fatwa, that he issued at least four years ago in which he declared that the production, stockpiling, or use of nuclear weapons was prohibited under Islam. The Iranian government cited the fatwa at an August 2005 meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.
"Our nation says we want to have a nuclear industry," Khamenei said yesterday. "We want to use nuclear energy in a peaceful way. However, the West and America say that the Iranian nation is seeking to make a nuclear bomb. Why are they telling lies?"
Khamenei, who served as president of Iran for eight years in the 1980s, succeeded Khomeini as supreme leader in 1989, becoming the nation's highestranking political and religious authority.
