Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issues statement following US threats against Tehran over alleged plot to murder Saudi ambassador

This article is more than 8 years old

This article is more than 8 years old

Iran's supreme leader warned the United States on Sunday that any measures taken against Tehran over an alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington would elicit a "resolute" response.

"If US officials have some delusions, [they must] know that any unsuitable act, whether political or security, will meet a resolute response from the Iranian nation," state TV quoted supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as saying.

Two men, including a member of Iran's special foreign actions unit known as the Quds Force, have been charged in New York federal court with conspiring to kill the Saudi diplomat, Adel Al-Jubeir. US officials have said no one was ever in any immediate danger from the plot.

The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, said the US would use the allegations as leverage with other countries that have been reluctant to apply harsh sanctions or penalties against Iran.

Barack Obama said on Thursday that the US will be able to support all of its allegations that Iran was directly involved in the plot.

But Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters in Iran, said that the US accused Iran of terror in order to divert attention from its economic woes and from the Occupy Wall Street protest movement.

"By attributing an absurd and meaningless accusation to a few Iranians, they tried … to show that Iran is a supporter of terrorism … This conspiracy didn't work and won't work," he said.

Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, dismissed American accusations as a fabricated scenario.

"Iran is a civilised nation and doesn't need to resort to assassination," Ahmadinejad was quoted by the official IRNA news agency as saying on Sunday.

Iranian officials have denied the allegations since they emerged last week. A statement by Khamenei on Saturday, and Ahmadinejad's remarks on Sunday, were the first comments made by the country's two highest leaders.

In a statement released on Saturday, the Iranian government said it had no connection to Manssor Arbabsiar, the man arrested in the alleged plot.

"Unilaterally announcing accusations without showing documentation and creating a media wave against Iran is in no way compatible with legal logic, and can only be a purely media and political show," it said.

Arbabsiar, 56,is a naturalised US citizen who also had an Iranian passport.

In May 2011, the criminal complaint says, he approached someone he believed to be in the Mexican narco-terror group, Los Zetas, for help with an attack on a Saudi embassy. The man approached turned out to be an informant for US drug agents, it says.

The US charges that Arbabsiar had been told by his cousin, Abdul Reza Shahlai, a high-ranking member of the Quds Force, to recruit a drug trafficker because drug gangs have a reputation for assassinations.

Iranian lawmakers and analysts have said Iran would not benefit from killing the Saudi ambassador in Washington, and thus has no reason to do so.