Ayatollah Rejects Idea of U.S. Ties

In a sermon punctuated by cries of “Death to America!” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei laid down a tough line Friday against any normalizing of ties with the United States, saying such scandalous talk must not be tolerated.

But Iran’s supreme leader stopped short of criticizing Mohammad Khatami, the country’s popular president who last week urged a U.S.-Iranian cultural exchange, professed admiration for American civilization and suggested removing the “wall of mistrust” between the two countries.

Although it included a perfunctory expression of approval of the president, Khamenei’s speech appeared to be another example of the hard-line leader and the moderate president speaking in contradictory voices for the country of 61 million, as they have several times since Khatami took office in August.

Khamenei, the disciple of and handpicked successor to the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, is constitutionally Iran’s ultimate spiritual, moral and legal power. He ranks above Khatami. But the elected president, who heads the executive branch of government, has the advantage over Khamenei in terms of personal popularity, especially among the young.

Speaking at Tehran University before thousands of students and most high-level officials with the exception of Khatami, Khamenei seemed, in his speech, to attempt to reassert his authority over the government and nip burgeoning speculation in and outside Iran that Tehran’s reestablishment of diplomatic relations with Washington slowly is becoming an inevitability.

“Negotiations or normalization of relations with the United States would bring no benefits to the Iranian nation, and the results would be harmful to Iran,” Khamenei declared.

He accused Western news media of “spreading rumors about talks.”

“They want to suggest that the Islamic Republic has surrendered, that the arrogance [the West] has defeated the Islamic pole in the world,” Khamenei said.

Referring to newspaper commentaries on the question, he said, “It is unfortunate to observe some of the domestic press are following the same policy line as the sworn enemies of the Islamic Revolution” in favor of normalizing relations.

It was Khamenei’s first public commentary on Khatami’s Jan. 7 interview with Cable News Network, a milestone event that was widely seen as the friendliest overture by an Iranian leader toward the United States since the 1979 revolution.

Khamenei did not attack Khatami head-on. He said he had listened to Khatami’s words carefully. He called the performance “an excellent talk” that was “rationally and realistically presented.” But he said it was being deliberately misinterpreted, and, “as a leader, I have the responsibility to disclose what is true to the nation.”

In his 45-minute CNN appearance, billed as an address to the American people, Khatami adopted a conciliatory tone and expressed regret for the hurt caused to Americans by the taking of U.S. hostages in Tehran in 1979.

Khamenei, on the other hand, used his speech to praise the students who stormed the U.S. Embassy to seize 52 diplomatic personnel. He said it was “U.S. conspiracies [that] led the students . . . to take over the spy den.”

Khamenei also said it would take a “thick volume” to recall all the crimes that Iran has suffered because of the United States, including the thousands of Iranians killed and maimed in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War in which, he noted, Washington had backed Iraq.

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Khamenei said it would be a betrayal for Iran to resume diplomatic ties now. “The American regime is the enemy of [Iran’s] Islamic government and our revolution. It is the enemy of your revolution, your Islam and your resistance to American bullying,” he told the students, who interrupted him with chants of “God is great!” and “Death to America!”

He also admonished Americans: “You complain about us calling you the ‘Great Satan’ while you do satanic acts. Don’t do satanic acts, and we won’t call you the ‘Great Satan.’ ”

Khatami and Khamenei have disagreed in public before, notably at the Islamic summit in Tehran in December, when Khatami spoke of a dialogue between Islam and the West while Khamenei said that the West was degenerate and doomed to be destroyed by its own carnality and other excesses.