Wall St demos will lead to West’s fall: Iran leader

AFP: The protests on Wall Street and elsewhere in the United States will grow to “mark the downfall of the West,” Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Wednesday.

TEHRAN, October 12, 2011 (AFP) – The protests on Wall Street and elsewhere in the United States will grow to “mark the downfall of the West,” Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Wednesday.

“This issue in America is very important,” Khamenei said in a public speech broadcast on Iranian state television.

“What they are calling the Wall Street movement has excited the people and is an important issue, which they (the US media) have tried to downplay,” he told a crowd in the western city of Kermanshah.

“The corruption of the capitalist regime has become evident for these people (the protesters)… This movement will soar to completely mark the downfall of the West and the capitalist regime,” he said.

“The one percent (who are ruling America) launched the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the remaining 99% have to suffer the deaths and pay for it,” he said.

The protesters on New York City’s Wall Street are showing no signs of flagging, though arrests have occurred in similar demonstrations in Boston and Washington.

Iran’s media and several officials have recently taken to calling the movement an “American Spring,” in the style of the “Arab Spring” that swept through several autocratic regimes in the Middle East this year.