In an official statement meant to express condolences to the families of the victims of the June 7 attacks in Tehran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, attacked the United States and Saudi Arabia.

The statement, released by Khamenei’s office, says the terror attacks on the Iranian Parliament and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s mausoleum clearly show the “enmity and hatefulness” of “mercenaries of arrogance” toward the Iranian people, the 1979 Revolution, and the regime that followed, as well as its founder, Khomeini.

“World arrogance” has been a phrase used since the early years of the republic to mean the major Western powers and specifically the United States, replacing the word “imperialist” used by Marxists and anti-Western leftist groups in the 20th century.

Khamenei’s statement also says “such crimes, which betray the malice, and at the same time, the paltriness” of those who ordered and oversaw these actions, are too insignificant to shake “the will of the Iranian people.”

Khamenei’s statement then goes on to directly mention the United States.

“The definitive result [of the attacks] is nothing but to increase hatred toward the government of the U.S. and its agents such as Saudi Arabia,” he said.

On June 7, half a dozen well-armed attackers entered the administrative building of the Iranian Parliament in the center of Tehran and Khomeini’s mausoleum in the south of the city in what turned into a bloody siege. In the end, 17 people were killed and 50 injured. The attackers, except for one woman, were also killed, according to Iranian authorities.

Iranian intelligence has blamed Sunni extremist “Takfiri” groups for having recruited the Iranians who conducted the attacks. Iranian authorities usually use the term Takfiri to mean Sunni extremists allegedly linked to Saudi Arabia.