MNA – The UK’s hijacking of Iranian oil tanker brings back the memories of a multitude of crimes committed against the Iranian nation by the ‘cunning, colonial fox’, according to the Tehran Friday prayers interim Leader.







Tehran Provisional Friday Prayers Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ahmad Khatami said during this week’s sermon that the UK’s hijacking of Iranian tanker reminds the Iranian nation of a multitude of the cunning, colonial fox’s crimes. In Iran, people often refer to Britain for its long history of intervention in the country's affairs before the 1979 revolution as the ‘cunning, colonial fox.’

Khatami said that the Britons have provoked the hatred of the Iranian nation by their actions.

He said that the Britons were spearheading a campaign to partition in Iran in 1857, 1872, 1901 and 1971. They had a long history of interfering in Iran’s internal affairs, according to the Friday Prayers leader, and now they are accompanying the United States in its unjust sanctions against the Iranian nation.

The senior cleric further thanked the Iranian Intelligence Ministry for dismantling a 17-member team of CIA agents before they could take any action inside the country.

Khatami further referred to recent reductions in the JCPOA-related commitments on the part of Iran in the face of the other parties’ lack of action to abide by their commitments, saying that Iran’s actions should be continued in line with Iranian people’s demands.

He also pointed to trip by a Palestinian delegation to Tehran headed by the Saleh al-Arouri, the deputy chairman of the political bureau of the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and their meetings with high-ranking Iranian official including the Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, stressing that “as the Leader said the Islamic Republic is absolutely serious when it comes to the Palestine issue.”

He further stressed that Iran along with other liberation movements will stand against the US peace plan for Palestine dubbed as the “Deal of the Century”, describing some Arab states’ accompanying with Israel and the US as ‘treason.’

He went on to condemn continued illegal detention of top Shia cleric Sheikh Ibrahim Zakzaky by the Nigerian government, saying that Iran will accept the Nigerian cleric with open arms for his medical treatment as he is in a critical condition these days.

He further blamed Saudi Arabia and Israel for Zakzaky’s case.