Iran Supreme Leader Khamenei lambastes U.S. as 'really arrogant power'

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Tuesday the Islamic state would not be deceived into reconciliation with its arch foe and the United States was a "really arrogant power", state radio reported.

"The American government is a really arrogant power and the Iranian nation will not be deceived with its apparent reconciliatory behaviour until America abandons its arrogant attitude," Khamenei was quoted as saying by state radio.

U.S. President Barack Obama has said he is ready to deal directly with Iran, something his predecessor largely rejected.

Khamenei has frequently accused the United States of trying to overthrow the clerical establishment.

Washington cut diplomatic ties with Tehran shortly after Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution when radical students seized the American embassy in Tehran and took 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.

Iran will mark the 30th anniversary of the seizure of the U.S. embassy on Wednesday.

Tehran and Washington are also at odds over Tehran's nuclear program, which the West fears is a cover to build bombs. Tehran says it needs nuclear technology to generate electricity.

Iranian police said on Tuesday any "illegal" rallies on Nov. 4 would be strongly confronted and only anti-U.S. protests were considered legal, the official IRNA news agency quoted a police statement as saying.

"We are announcing that only anti-American rallies in front of the former American embassy in Tehran are legal. Other gatherings or rallies on Wednesday are illegal and will be strongly confronted by the police," Tehran police said in a statement, IRNA reported.

Anti-U.S. rallies will take place outside the former American embassy, now called the "den of espionage" in Iran.

Some reformist websites have called on people to gather outside the Russian embassy instead, in an apparent protest at Moscow's recognition of Ahmadinejad's re-election on June 12.

The wife of Iran's opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi has called on the authorities to release women jailed after the disputed June presidential election, the reformist Kaleme website reported on Tuesday.

"We demand immediate and unconditional release of all (political) prisoners, particularly those women who have been arrested since the election," the website quoted Zahra Rahnavard as saying.

Moderate defeated presidential candidates Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi have urged their supporters to take to the streets on Nov. 4, the 30th anniversary of the U.S. embassy takeover in Tehran. A reformist website said Karoubi will attend the rally.

The vote sparked Iran's worst unrest in the past three decades and exposed deep divisions in the establishment. The opposition rejects the vote as rigged, saying Ahmadinejad's government is illegitimate.

The authorities say the vote was "the healthiest" since the revolution. Iran's top authority Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said last week it was a crime to question the election.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards and allied Islamic Basij militia suppressed the post-election protests and thousands were arrested. Over 100 of them, including former senior officials, lawyers and activists are still in jail.

Iran's hard-line clerical establishment, trying to avoid any repeat of the huge demonstrations say security forces will confront any "illegal" gatherings, warning the opposition not to use the anti-U.S. rallies on Wednesday to stage new protests.

"Today, our duty is to defend the revolution and the Velayat-e faqih (Islamic jurisprudence)," Mohamadreza Naqdi, head of Iran's volunteer Basij militia, was quoted as saying by the Hayat-e No daily.

The opposition says more than 70 people were killed in the post-election violence. The official death toll is 36 people.

Tehran's prosecutor also called on Iranians to be careful about "diversionary" slogans at Wednesday's rallies, the official IRNA news agency reported.

"Those who try to disrupt the anti-American rallies on Wednesday will be confronted," said Abbas Jafari.