VOA \u2014 Iranian state media have given a distorted view of Western news coverage of a rare public sermon by Iran\u2019s supreme leader, ignoring how Western outlets highlighted perceived shortcomings in his responses to domestic problems. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei led Friday prayers in Tehran for the first time since 2012, giving a sermon at the capital\u2019s Grand Mosque. The longtime supreme leader has limited such public sermons to times of national crisis in the past. In his speech, Khamenei harshly criticized the United States and its European allies Britain, France and Germany. He singled out American leaders as \u201cclowns\u201d for professing to stand with Iran\u2019s people while in practice seeking to \u201cstab\u201d Iranians in the back with a \u201cpoisoned dagger.\u201d<\/p>\n
Khamenei\u2019s speech came two weeks after the U.S. carried out what it called a self-defensive strike that killed his top general, Qassem Soleimani, at Baghdad airport. In his remarks, Khamenei accused the U.S. of engaging in a \u201cterrorist\u201d act by killing Soleimani, who led Iran\u2019s elite Quds Force and whom the U.S. had designated as the head of a terrorist organization that killed hundreds of U.S. troops in Iraq and directed proxy militias to fight U.S. allies in the region. \u00a0<\/p>\n
The Iranian supreme leader also denounced Britain, France and Germany as U.S. lackeys after they decided this week to trigger a dispute resolution mechanism in their 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, a potential step toward joining the U.S. in re-imposing economic sanctions on Tehran.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n
Khamenei expressed sorrow over the Jan. 8 shooting down of a Ukrainian passenger plane by Iranian forces that mistook it for an enemy threat shortly after it took off from Tehran. Hours earlier, his forces had fired missiles at U.S. troops in Iraq in retaliation for the Soleimani killing and had braced themselves for a U.S. counterattack. No U.S. forces were killed in the Iranian missile strike, however, and Washington did not hit back. \u00a0<\/p>\n
For three days after the plane crashed, killing all 176 people on board, Iranian officials insisted it was not their fault despite Western media and officials citing intelligence sources as saying Iranian missile fire downed the aircraft. Officials belatedly acknowledged that their denials of responsibility were false on Saturday, angering hundreds of Iranians who joined four days of anti-government protests in Tehran and other cities.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe plane crash was a bitter tragedy that burned through our heart,\u201d Khamenei said in his sermon. However, he made no apology for his government\u2019s initial false statements about the crash and criticized those who joined the anti-government protests as unrepresentative of the Iranian people. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Prominent Western news agencies had extensive coverage of Khamenei\u2019s rare public sermon.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n
Iranian state media outlets Fars News Agency<\/a>\u00a0 and ISNA<\/a> published summaries of those Western news reports, highlighting their references to Khamenei\u2019s strong denunciations of the U.S. and European powers. Fars and ISNA also cited the Western news agencies as noting the large size of Khamenei\u2019s audience, with thousands of people cramming into the mosque for the sermon.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n A VOA Persian review of Khamenei sermon articles by the eight Western news agencies cited by Fars and ISNA, though, found that the two Iranian state media outlets ignored several key elements of the Western news coverage.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n In one example, Fars avoided mentioning that a Reuters report<\/a> said Khamenei stopped short of a direct apology for the plane disaster. \u201cOn social media, some Iranians reacted angrily\u201d to the lack of an apology, the report said. \u00a0<\/p>\n