Iran supreme leader accuses US of terrorism

Iran's supreme leader on Saturday accused the United States of supporting terrorism, pointing to American drone strikes in Pakistan and Afghanistan that allegedly have killed scores of civilians, Associated Press reports.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said a country whose military forces are responsible for such deaths can't lecture the world about fighting terror.

Strong anti-U.S. salvos are heard regularly from Iran's leadership. But Saturday's statement by Khamenei also reverberated the depth of rift between Iran and the U.S. on who is a terrorist and who is a freedom fighter.

"The U.S. and European governments that follow it describe Palestinian combatant groups who fight for liberation of their land as terrorists," Khamenei said in a written message to an international conference on combating terrorism that opened Saturday in Tehran.

However, Khamenei said Israeli military strikes against civilian targets or assassination of Palestinians by Israeli security agents are not condemned by the West as acts of terrorism.