TEHRAN, 20 August 2007 — Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei yesterday launched a new attack on the United States, saying Iran’s archenemy was “stuck in a whirlpool” and would sink deeper in the future. “America is weaker compared to 20 years ago and it does not have its previous power and grandeur,” Khamenei said in a speech at a religious conference, state television reported.

“America and its followers are stuck in a whirlpool and they sink deeper as time passes. A dangerous future is predicted for them,” he added. The United States cut diplomatic ties with Iran in 1980 during the siege of its embassy in Tehran by Islamist students in the wake of the revolution, which deposed the US-backed shah.

Relations have remained frozen ever since and are marked by continued enmity, with the United States labeled as the “Great Satan” by Tehran. “In the eternal battle between right and wrong, the Great Satan will lose out,” added Khamenei. Strains have increased in recent months over Iran’s controversial nuclear program and the detention by Tehran of three US-Iranians accused of harming national security.

Although US and Iranian officials have this year met three times in landmark talks in Baghdad aimed at bringing security to Iraq they have failed to make any significant breakthrough.

Khamenei’s comments also came just days after it emerged US President George W. Bush was set to issue an executive order blacklisting Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist group in order to block its assets.

The Guards, one of the key institutions in the Islamic republic and increasingly powerful in the economy, have brushed aside the charges as “superficial measures” and vowed that the force would not be deterred.

Meanwhile, media reported yesterday that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government has shrugged off unprecedented criticism from the head of the judiciary, telling the high-ranking cleric not to interfere.

Judiciary head Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi warned in a speech last week that the government was needlessly changing top officials, in a rare intervention from a cleric who usually stays out of day-to-day politics.

“Ayatollah Shahroudi, as head of the judiciary, knows more than anyone about the correct separation of powers,” between Iranian institutions, Ahmadinejad’s top adviser Ali Akbar Javanfekr told the governmental Iran newspaper.

“It is wrong for these powers to interfere in each other’s affairs. It is expected that this is rectified and its repetition prevented,” he told the newspaper’s Saturday edition in remarks picked up by other media yesterday.

“High-ranking officials should take extra care with their choice of words so that some statements cannot be exploited by those who cannot bear the unity between our pillars of the system,” the daily added in an editorial.

Shahroudi on Wednesday complained that the country was being harmed by frequent changes of ministers and top managers, in remarks seen by the reformist press as a direct attack on the president’s style of government.

The ayatollah is one of the most respected clerics in Iran and is renowned for his depth of knowledge of Islamic jurisprudence (Fiqh).

Since Ahmadinejad came to power in August 2005, a host of mid- to high-ranking officials have been replaced in sensitive ministries, most notably foreign affairs and oil.