Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Thursday praised U.S. student protesters for forming “a branch of the Resistance Front.”
In a series of tweets aimed at Israel and U.S. student protest groups, Khamenei wrote that the protesters “are standing on the right side of history” and urged them “to become familiar with the Quran.”
“You have now formed a branch of the Resistance Front and have begun an honorable struggle in the face of your government’s ruthless pressure, which openly supports Zionists,” he wrote.
The support of their professors “in the face of your government’s police brutality & the pressures it is exerting on you, is a consequential development,” he added.
Khamenei, Iran’s second supreme leader following its 1979 Islamic Revolution, went on to accuse Israelis of committing “genocide” in Gaza, writing, “The apartheid Zionist regime’s genocide today is the continuation of extreme oppressive behavior which has been going on for decades.”
Israel, he said, had been created by “the capitalist Zionist network” after World War I, with the help of Britain.
“They murdered thousands, pushed out multitudes into neighboring countries, seized their homes & formed a govt. in the usurped Palestine & called it Israel,” he wrote.
The United States, he said, was “the greatest supporter of the Zionist regime” and had “even opened the way for the regime’s production of nuclear weapons.”
Condemnations of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza by the U.S. government “are more hypocritical than real,” he added.
That the “courageous, humane resistance front” had been libeled as terrorism by “the global Zionist elite,” which “owns most U.S. and European media corporations or influences them through funding and bribery,” he said.
History, he continued, was “turning a page.”
“The people’s conscience has awakened on a global scale & truth is coming to light. Besides you students from dozens of universities in the U.S., there have also been uprisings in other countries among academics & general public,” he said.