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On Saturday evening, hours after President Obama criticized Iran’s government for its violent response to protests over last year’s disputed presidential election, Iran’s ruling cleric, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the country’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, responded by attacking the United States and defending the election as a “landslide” victory.

According to a translation by Reuters, Ayatollah Khamenei said, in an address broadcast on Nowruz, the Persian New Year, on state television in Iran, “Sometimes the U.S. government appears as a wolf or a fox and looks violent and arrogant, and sometimes they look different.” He also said, “They hoped to create a civil war in this country but the people were vigilant,” and added in reference to the upheaval, “It was a great ordeal and lesson, and the people of Iran emerged victorious.”