DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – Iran’s supreme leader says his nation is living through “days of God.”
The Islamic Republic has been reeling from one crisis to another, from the targeted killing by the United States of its top general to the Revolutionary Guard’s accidental shootdown of a passenger plane carrying scores of young people, most of them Iranians. U.S. sanctions have crippled its economy as tensions with America have soared.
In a rare Friday sermon in Tehran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei stuck to the playbook Iran has relied on since 1979, blaming the country’s woes on the U.S. and other Western powers, and proclaiming that Iranians still support the Islamic Revolution.
He pointed to the outpouring of grief after Gen. Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s top general, was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians attended funeral services across the country for Soleimani, who was revered by many as a war hero. But the funeral itself was marred by tragedy when 56 people died in a stampede of mourners in Soleimani’s hometown of Kerman.
The moment of national unity was shattered days later, when Iranian forces accidentally shot down a Ukrainian jetliner, killing all 176 people on board, and then concealed their responsibility until they were confronted with mounting evidence from Western leaders.