Calling out Trump directly, the Supreme Leader added: “The U.S. President threatens us. With his absurd rhetoric, he demands that the Iranian people surrender to him. They should make threats against those who are afraid of being threatened. The Iranian nation isn’t frightened by such threats.”

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has spent almost four decades as Shi'ite Iran's supreme leader building a regional power to rival the Sunni states across the Gulf and implacably hostile to the U.S. and Israel - while crushing repeated unrest at home.