Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on 26 November condemned US President Bush's recent calls for democracy in the MENA region and said that the US was an 'enemy of Islam'. '[The US] are against democracy because they know that voting in Iraq or anywhere else in the Muslim world today will prove that Muslim nations would elect those who whole heartedly consider Americans as enemies of Islam,' Khamenei told worshippers in his Eid al-Fitr sermon on 26 November. Speaking at the Imam Khomeini Mosalla prayer ground in Tehran, Khameini addressed Americans, saying that the US-led invasion in Iraq was in a stagnating position. 'You should know that your government has through Iraq's occupation pushed the US into a quagmire and it further sinks into the swamp day by day,' he said. 'The US government should know that it will fail to take Muslim nations in the Middle East captive, even by raising its military budget ten-fold because the great, struggling and noble Iranian nation sets as a symbol for other nations, giving them lessons of perseverance and prosperity,' he added (MEED 20:6:03).