(CNSNews.com) – On the day Americans went to the polls, Iran’s supreme leader in a speech marking the regime’s annual anti-U.S. commemoration declared that it doesn’t matter who wins the presidential election, because the “ugly face” of America will never change.
“This empire will not last long,” said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “When a regime reaches this point, they will not last so long. They’re on their last legs.”
Khamenei was speaking on the regime’s “National Day of Campaign against Global Arrogance,” held each year to mark the day when students loyal to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini occupied the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, eventually holding 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. The crisis laid the groundwork for the still-hostile relationship between the U.S. and the nation it views as the world’s number one state sponsor of terrorism.
President Trump has ramped up economic pressure on Tehran since withdrawing in 2018 from the nuclear deal that was one of the Obama-Biden administration’s signature foreign policy accomplishments. Early this year, Trump ordered the drone strike that killed Qods Force commander Qassem Soleimani.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has pledged to re-enter the nuclear agreement “if Tehran returns to compliance,” and to “strengthen and extend it” with support from allies.
“Some people talk about what’s going to happen if this person or that person comes to power,” Khamenei said, but whatever happens, “it will not impact our policies.”
“We have our own clear-cut and well-calculated policies and it doesn’t make any difference who takes office.”
Khamenei observed that Trump and Biden have exchanged accusations relating to possible electoral fraud.
“That’s the style of U.S. democracy. This is how they comment about their own elections,” he said. “And this shows the ugly face of liberal democracy within American society.”
“Now regardless of who’s going to be elected, this one or that one,” Khamenei said, “one thing is certain, and that is the political and moral and social decadence of the U.S., no matter who is elected.”
“The American regime is beset with political and civil decadence,” he said, saying this was the opinion held by American commentators themselves. Khamenei said he had read a Farsi translation of one recent book, which showed “the decadence of the U.S. establishment and the moves that the U.S. president has taken.”
(A tweet by the supreme leader’s office later indicated that he was referring to Bob Woodward’s “Fear: Trump in the White House.”)
“This empire will not last long,” Khamenei concluded. “When a regime reaches this point, they will not last so long. They’re on their last legs.”
Khamenei oversees a regime in which he holds absolute power for life. The Guardian Council, an unelected religious-judicial body appointed by the supreme leader, has the power to approve or disqualify candidates for the presidency or legislative office.