The Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has said that negotiations and relations with the United States would not only be useless for Iran but also harmful. The Iranian leader's comments came in the aftermath of President Mohammed Khatami's unprecedented television address to the American people last week which, as our Middle East correspondent, Jim Muir, reports, has pitched the issue of relations with Washington into the centre of the Iranian political stage:

President Mohammed Khatami: conciliatory towards US

Since President Khatami's path-breaking step in talking directly to the American people last week, the question of relations with the United States has been endlessly debated in the opinion columns of the Iranian press and commented on by virtually everyone of political consequence. Now the supreme leader himself has given his view in his address to Friday Prayers at Tehran University.

As might have been expected, while the substance of his message was not necessarily incompatible with that of President Khatami, his tone was very much harsher. Mr Khatami, the conciliator, never uses such words as 'enemy', but Ayatollah Khamenei has no such complexes.

The American regime, he said, was the enemy of the Iranian Islamic government and revolution. It would be a mistake to think that American hostility to Iran would lessen if Tehran began talks with Washington.

So, he said, negotiations and relations with the domineeering American government would not just be useless, they would be harmful.

The Ayatollah also defended the Iranian practice of referring to the United States as 'the great Satan', saying 'stop behaving like a devil and we'll stop calling you that'.

As supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei would have to give his approval for the opening of a political dialogue with the American government - something even President Khatami and his supporters are not at present proposing.

The Ayatollah's tough talk makes it clearer than ever that if a political breakthrough is to be achieved, the first big step will have to come from Washington.

For Iran that would have to involve the lifting of American sanctions, something the US is unlikely to do without the direct dialogue with the Iranian government which Tehran rules out.

For the meantime, progress therefore can only be in the realm of the improved contact between the two peoples, which President Khatami advocates so strongly - an idea on which Ayatollah Khamenei apparently had nothing to say.
 

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