Iran’s top leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has claimed that the protests that have started in New York City and are spreading across the US reflect a serious crisis that will ultimately topple capitalism in America.
During a rally in the western Iranian city of Kermanshah on Wednesday, Khamenei stated that the US is now in a full-blown crisis because its “corrupt foundation has been exposed to the American people,” according to the Associated Press.
“[The US government] may crack down on this movement, but cannot uproot it,” said Iran’s supreme leader. “Ultimately, it will grow so that it will bring down the capitalist system and the West.”
According to the ayatollah, Western capitalism has reached a dead end and that “the world is at a historical turn.”
Demonstrations held by the loosely organized “Occupy Wall Street” movement flared in lower Manhattan last month as a protest against the existing financial system and social injustice.
The movement has spread to other major US cities, including Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Seattle and Los Angeles.
The protesters claim that they are “the 99 percent that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1 percent.”