Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei delivered a sharp critique of the United States during a religious celebration on January 28, describing America as "fully embodying colonialism and arrogance" while being "under the influence of the world's top financial powers."

In a speech marking a public holiday related to the prophet of Islam, Khamenei, flanked by the country’s president, head of the parliament, and judiciary, made the remarks only a week after Donald Trump was inaugurated as president for a second non-consecutive term. In his first public event since the new US administration came to power, he did not mention the American president even once in his official speech.  

"Today, we face three stages of colonialism. The world's satanic powers target countries' natural resources, their authentic culture, and their national and Islamic identity, seeking to destroy and seize them. They are not all the same, but America leads them," Khamenei said during his address to government officials, Islamic country ambassadors and public representatives.

Khamenei connected his political message to religious teachings: "I congratulate this blessed Mab'ath to you respected attendees, to all Iranian nation, to the great Islamic Ummah, and to all freedom-seeking people of the world.

The Prophet's mission is truly a celebration for all free people of the world," a line he often repeats, suggesting Tehran did not change its revolutionary path in January 1979, which toppled the country’s former monarchy under Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

"The mission is a continuous and permanent movement," he explained. "Its blessings can be utilised in all eras. The same transformation that occurred at the beginning of the mission, when the Holy Prophet himself came to the field with indescribable effort, is possible in all times proportionally - proportional to humans, with our difference from that great peak."

He said about the conditions for such transformation: "The condition is that we employ the two factors that the Prophet utilised: reason and faith."

Khamenei further observed that the resistance, which originated in Islamic Iran, had brought certain Muslim nations to the forefront and roused the consciences of many non-Muslims.

Turning to the events in the Gaza Strip, Khamenei said that the diminutive territory had brought the Zionist regime, armed to the hilt and backed wholeheartedly by the US, to its knees.

In another part of his discourse, Khamenei mentioned that both allies and adversaries had assumed the assassination of the Hezbollah leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, had extinguished Lebanon's resistance movement. Nonetheless, he continued, "Hezbollah demonstrated that not only was it not snuffed out, but in some instances, its motivation had increased to the extent that it successfully stood up against Israel."

It is currently unclear if Khamenei is laying the groundwork for talks between Iran and the new US administration, where a flurry of backdoor negotiations between the two countries has been ongoing for several weeks before the Trump administration's start.

He linked this year's celebrations to what he called "the victorious month of Bahman," expressing hope that "the revolution's movement, whose founder intended to follow the Prophet and his mission, will continue on its path."

"When thought is corrected, action will be corrected," Khamenei concluded.

"The system of life is based on the thought that exists in those who manage life. If intellectual transformation and understanding of the world occur in humans and societies, then political, economic, moral and social systems will be formed based on that," he said.