Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Sunday that the United States will be expelled from Iraq and Syria and alleged that even Washington's allies "abhor" it now.
The US "will not be staying either in Iraq or Syria and must withdraw and will certainly be expelled", said Khamenei, according to AFP.
"Even the leaders of some of America's allies... abhor American statesmen and government, do not trust them and are indifferent towards them," Khamenei claimed during a video conference meeting with university students.
He stated this was due to what he called the US' "warmongering, helping notorious governments, training terrorists, unconditional support for the Zionist regime's increasing oppression and their recent awful management of the coronavirus" pandemic.
Tensions between the arch enemies have escalated since 2018, when US President Donald Trump withdrew the 2015 nuclear accord and reimposed crippling sanctions on Iran's economy.
They have appeared to come close to direct military confrontation twice since June last year, when Iran shot down a US drone in the Gulf.
On that occasion, Trump cancelled retaliatory air strikes at the last minute.
In the last few years there have been several close encounters between Iranian and American vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.
Most recently, the US accused Iran of conducting “dangerous and harassing” maneuvers near American warships in the northern Persian Gulf.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard later acknowledged it had a tense encounter with US warships in the Persian Gulf, but also claimed that it was American forces who sparked the incident.