Tehran, YJC. Head of the Shiraz Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has stressed that the US president must follow Iranian leader ayatollah Ali Khamenei as his marja’.
Brigadier General
Qolamhossein Qeib-parvar speaking on Saturday at a local conference
commemorating Kazerun martyrs said "There are only two things that would end
enmity between us and the US. Either the US president and EU leaders should
convert to Islam and imitate the Supreme Leader, or Iran should abandon Islam
and the Islamic revolution.”
EU or US leaders would not
turn Muslim, he observed, adding "If they are not going to turn Muslim, we are
not going to abandon Islam or the revolution either. But I do not know why some
people believe that some day we will make peace with the US and start relations
with them.”
The US halted relations with Iran
shortly after the Islamic revolution. The move came after a number of Iranian activists,
mostly students, occupied the US Embassy in Tehran and took the American
diplomats in there hostage.
With the 11th Iranian
administration as Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has met with his
American counterpart in the course of the one year or so, optimism has been on
rise that the two countries will eventually thaw the ice in relations and
conduct more active diplomatic moves.
In 2013, the Iranian
President Hassan Rouhani and his American counterpart Barack Obama talked over
the telephone while the former was on a visit to New York to attend the UN
General Assembly.