Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei uses Eid speech to condemn 'vicious' American military interventions in the Middle East

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has branded the US a “vicious source” of problems in the Middle East that has driven wars and insecurity in the region.

He said the US government was trying to make the world forget Palestine, which he described as the most important problem in the Muslim world, and said Israel will “receive a slap”.

In a speech for the fast-breaking festivities of Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of Ramadan, the supreme leader said: “The only way to confront these plots is identifying the real enemy and standing up against it.”.

“They want to deny the existence of a geography and a nation, while Palestine has a history of thousands of years and the Palestinian nation also owns a land and these realities cannot be forgotten,” Iran’s Fars News Agency reports him saying.

He also claimed the US has been “practically supporting terrorism” and had exacerbated political conflicts in Syria leading to the civil war.

He said: “They turned a political conflict into fratricide and then brought some people from different parts to Syria and Iraq and created today's insecurities and problems in the region through their financial and weapons supports and using illegitimate oil revenues.”

Addressing recent terrorist attacks in the Middle East, the supreme leader heaped scorn on those who wanted to impose a “fake Islam”, but added the attacks were the result of actions by the US, UK and Israel.

He said: “Unfortunately, this year's Eid al-Fitr in some countries was turned into mourning by those terrorists who want to replace the real Islam with fake Islam at the order of their leaders; and these crimes are the outcome of nurturing terrorists by the security services of the US, the UK and the Zionist regime.”

US-Iranian relations have improved slightly in recent months after the US repealed sanctions against Iran in exchange for reduced nuclear activity, however, US support for Israel has long been a source of diplomatic division between the countries.