March 11, 2010  Print Email | US attitude towards Iran still hostile: Khamenei
"American leaders can't deceive our nation or scare it"
Posted by Agencies at 10:11 AM GMT on Mar 21, 2009 | TEHRAN (AFP): A day after US President Barack Obama reached out to Iran, saying his administration is willing to "pursue constructive ties with the latter, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the Islamic republic is ready to change if President Obama leads the way by changing American attitude towards his country.
 "If you change your attitude, we will change our attitude," Khamenei said in a groundbreaking address to thousands of Iranians in the holy city of Mashhad which was broadcast on state television.
Speaking a day after Obama offered Tehran a "new beginning" to turn back the tide on decades of mutual animosity, Khamenei said however Iran is yet to see any change in Washington's attitude towards Tehran.
"We have no experience with the new American government and the new American president. We will observe them and we will judge," he said.
"We cannot see any change. What is the change in your policy? Did you remove the sanctions? Did you stop supporting the Zionist regime? Tell us what you have changed. We can't see change even in the words of the new American president. Change only in words is not enough. Change must be real," Khamenei said.
"The American leaders and others must know that they can't deceive our nation or scare it."
Khamenei accused Washington of having had a "hostile" attitude towards Tehran since the Islamic revolution toppled the US-backed shah in 1979. "They supported all the terrorist and opponent groups" against Iran, he said.
"We can see the American hand behind these groups. Unfortunately, this support is still continuing," he said, adding that US-backed groups were also aiding rebels fighting Iranian security forces along the Iran-Pakistan border.
Highlighting the three-decades old animosity, Khamenei said Iran would not forget American support to Saddam Hussein during the 1980-88 war between Iran and Iraq or the shooting down of an Iranian passenger plane in 1988 by a US warship that killed all 290 passengers on board.
"In all these years, they carried out hostile propaganda against our country, especially in the past eight years," the powerful cleric said, referring to the tenure of George W. Bush.
Bush had refused to talk to Iran following the launch by the Islamic republic of a controversial nuclear programme. He also lumped Iran as part of an "axis of evil" along with Saddam Hussein's Iraq and North Korea.
Iranian leaders regularly refer to the US as the "Great Satan."
In an historic online video message marking the Iranian New Year Nowruz on Friday, Obama urged an end to decades of animosity and offered "honest" engagement with the Islamic republic.
In a decisive break with Bush, Obama called Nowruz celebrations a time of "new beginnings" and said Iran could take its "rightful place" in the world if it renounced terror and embraced peace.
But Khamenei said that Obama, in his message, had accused Iran of supporting terrorism.
"He congratulated Iranians for the new year, but in the same speech he accused Iranians of supporting terrorism and looking for nuclear weapons," he said.
"We don't know who is taking decisions in the United States.. is it the president, or the Congress, or somebody else? But we are acting logically and not emotionally."
Khamenei also warned that if Washington does not make changes in its policy towards Tehran, it will be more disadvantageous to it than to Iran.
"You put sanctions on our country for 30 years but it benefitted us and we became stronger. We actually thank the Americans for that," he said as the crowd chanted "Death to America! Death to Israel! Khamenei is the leader!"
Iranian officials have boasted that the sanctions encouraged them to develop local technologies, including space science that saw Tehran launching its first home-built satellite into orbit last month.
The White House, meanwhile, said it has more steps planned to entice Iran to engage in dialogue with the United States.
The New York Times reported Saturday, citing unnamed officials and diplomats, that among other measures being weighed by the US administration are a direct communication from Obama to Khamenei, and an end to a prohibition on direct contacts between junior US diplomats and their Iranian counterparts around the world.
(By Jay Deshmukh)
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