Iran's supreme leader shrugs off hopes for policy shift after US midterms

Amid a sweeping Democratic Party victory in US midterm elections that dealt a blow to President Donald Trump, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei shrugged off any expectation that a partisan shift in Washington would change American policy toward Iran.

In a written statement published Wednesday (local time) on his website to mark Iran's "National Day Against Global Arrogance," Khamenei said it would be "a grave mistake" for anyone to hold out hope that a change in partisan control within the US governing system would alter American behavior, or to imagine that making concessions to Washington would soften its hostility toward Iran. He also warned that any renewed US military strikes against Iran would cause the war in the Middle East to expand far beyond its current scope.

Iran's National Day Against Global Arrogance commemorates the Nov. 4, 1979 seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran. Each year the occasion is marked by rallies and events aimed at stoking anti-American sentiment.

"If such acts of aggression are repeated, the scale will be far broader," Khamenei said, adding that Iran's earlier actions in the Strait of Hormuz and elsewhere were "merely an initial phase."

Referring to the United States as the "Great Satan," he said "what America truly wants is the unconditional surrender of the Iranian people."

He went on to say that "even the slightest sign of submission only emboldens the arrogant enemy and invites further aggression."

On the current situation in the Persian Gulf and the broader region, Khamenei said it "clearly exposes the myth of American invincibility as a fiction."

Khamenei has not appeared in public since he was wounded in late February when US and Israeli airstrikes killed his father, former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.