Hawzah News Agency ‌(Tehran, Iran) - “The Americans, who have close cooperation with the most evil and inhumane regimes in the region and caused such a huge scandal in their own recent election, are now targeting and criticizing Iranian nation’s election,” Imam Khamenei said at a Thursday meeting with the members of the Assembly of Experts, the top leadership supervisory body.

Imam Khamenei was reacting to the 2016 human rights report released by the US Department of State on March 3, questioning the electoral process in the Islamic Republic.

Imam Khamenei praised Iran’s strategic influence in the world, particularly in West Asia, as one of the Islamic Republic’s major achievements over the past four decades.

“Iran’s growing influence as well as [other] nations’ support for the Islamic establishment are our firm backbone. This has enraged the Americans, prompting their policy makers to look for a way to counter Iran’s” influential role, Imam Khamenei added.

As a major tactic to disappoint the Iranian nation, Imam Khamenei added, the enemy is resorting to political and economic pressure as well as attempts to quietly invade the country’s cultural arena.

“Their major objective is to disappoint the people with the Islamic establishment and deprive the officials of the fundamental [public] support in their resistance against the enemy,” Imam Khamenei.

On Tuesday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani also dismissed the recent US report criticizing elections in the Islamic Republic, urging American officials to focus on the internal affairs of their own country.

The Iranian president emphasized that both parties in the US - Democratic and Republican - had protested the results of the recent presidential election in the country, adding that even the current US president himself was skeptical about the cleanness of the polls before being elected as president.