“It is no novelty. … It is what the US governments have been doing to the world,” said Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in his first public reaction to the killing May 25 of African-American George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer. While Derek Chauvin, the white officer, was initially the only one charged in the case, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced today that the three other officers involved in the incident would also face charges.

According to Khamenei, the scene of “a cop kneeling on a black man’s neck and letting him choke to death … is the nature of the American government. They have done the same to such countries as Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.” 

Khamenei touched upon Floyd’s last words, “I can’t breathe,” which have characterized the recent anti-racism protests across the United States. “It is a slogan that speaks for the hearts of all nations oppressed by the United States,” Khamenei declared in his televised speech, likening the ongoing “turbulent” situation triggered by the “cold-blooded” killing to “the sludge at the bottom of a pool” that is now visible on the surface.

Last November, Khamenei faced nationwide protests in his own country over contentious fuel price hikes that brought thousands of Iranians to the streets. Back then, Khamenei called some of those protesters “thugs,” linking them to foreign enemies. It took Iranian authorities nearly seven months to come out and admit the deaths of at least 200 protesters in the crackdown.