Iran plane crash: Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei defends armed forces, calls Trump a clown

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Friday defended the country’s armed forces after it admitted to shooting down an Ukrainian passenger plane on January 8 by mistake, BBC reported. Anti-government protests have erupted across Iran over the incident, and the country is facing growing international pressure.

Khamenei, who gave his first Friday sermon in eight years, pointed out that the Revolutionary Guards – an elite force responsible for the disaster – “maintained the security” of Iran. Khamenei said his “heart burned” for the victims of the crash, but he accused Iran’s enemies of seeking to exploit the tragedy to bury the United States’ assassination of Iranian military leader General Qassem Soleimani, The New York Times reported.

“As much as we were sad about the crash, our enemy was happy about it,” Khamenei said. “They thought they found an excuse to undermine the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and our armed forces and question the Islamic Republic.” Khamenei described the protestors as “stooges of the United States”.