TEHRAN: Iran’s most powerful authority, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Sunday accused the United States and its allies of talking about the threat of a nuclear Iran to cover up their own problems, state television reported.    

“What Americans and Westerners do is idiotic. They magnify the nuclear issue to cover up their own problems,” Khamenei said in a televised address marking the 23rd anniversary of the death of the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Khamenei also said that the international community’s suspicion that Iran was seeking nuclear weapons is based on a “lie”.

Allegations that Iran was trying to develop atomic bombs were false, he also said.

“International political circles and media talk about the danger of a nuclear Iran, that a nuclear Iran is dangerous. I say that they lie. They are deceiving,” Khamenei said.

“What they are afraid of -- and should be afraid of -- is not a nuclear but an Islamic Iran.” He added: “They invoke the term ‘nuclear weapons’ based on a lie. They magnify and highlight the issue in their propoganda based on a lie. Their goal is to divert minds and public opinion from the (economic) events that are happening in the US and Europe.”

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei added that any attack by Israel on Iran will blow back on the Jewish state “like thunder,”.

If the Israelis “make any misstep or wrong action, it will fall on their heads like thunder,” Khamenei said in a speech marking the 1989 death of his predecessor and founder of Iran's Islamic republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

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West talks of nuclear Iran to hide own problems