Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Photo: www.sajed.ir via Wikimedia Commons.

Iran’s top cleric has declared that Tehran must establish relations with the “whole world” besides for the United States and the “Zionist regime,” the country’s semi-official state news agency Mehr reported on Thursday.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made the statement during a meeting of the newly elected Assembly of Experts, the body charged with appointing the supreme leader.

According to Mehr, Khamenei also said that “maintaining Revolutionary features, Jihadi movement, preserving national and Islamic dignity and identity, and avoiding dangerous dissolution into [the world’s] cultural, economic and political” systems constitutes progress for the country. “According to accurate info, the United States and the Arrogance front have serious plot to infiltrate,” he claimed further, but assured the gathering that “it will not be in for of a coup; because they know that it is impossible to conduct a coup in the Islamic Republic structure.”

He also outlined a strategy for Iran to confront such a “plot.”

“If the Islamic [Republic] is strong and rich domestically, those who are trying to bully… us, will queue [up]” to establish “relations with the Islamic System,” he said.

His combative remarks come on the heels of a ballistic-missile test on Wednesday, conducted by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which included the firing of rockets with the words “Israel must be wiped out” engraved on them.