“We are concerned about the people of Bahrain as (the ruling Al Khalifa regime) has turned the country into a big prison,” Ayatollah Khatami said, addressing a huge gathering of worshipers in Tehran on Friday.

He expressed the hope that the Bahraini people will one day “breathe a sigh of relief” and live in peace.

Bahrain, a close ally of the US in the Persian Gulf, has been witnessing regular protests against the Al Khalifa regime since early 2011, with security forces resorting to crackdown against demonstrators.

Scores of Bahrainis have been killed and hundreds of others injured and arrested in the protests.

Elsewhere in his address, Ayatollah Khatami slammed the Saudi regime’s relentless military aggression against Yemen, noting that the impoverished Arab country is suffering from lack of food and medicine as Riyadh’s military warplanes continue to pound humanitarian aid convoys.

Yemen’s defenseless people have been under massive attacks by the coalition for almost three years but Riyadh has reached none of its objectives in Yemen so far.

Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia and some of its Arab allies have been carrying out deadly airstrikes against the Houthi Ansarullah movement in an attempt to restore power to fugitive former president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi.

Over 14,000 Yemenis, including thousands of women and children, have lost their lives in the deadly military campaign.

“The independence referendum in the Kurdistan Region is an age-old dream cherished by the global arrogance (the US) to create another Israel in the region,” Ayatollah Khatami said, addressing a huge gathering of worshipers in Tehran on Friday.

However, they (the US and Israel) will never see their dreams come true, the cleric added.

The Zionist regime’s officials have openly supported the referendum, he said, adding that however, governments in Iran, Iraq, and Turkey have expressed their strong opposition to the referendum.

He further expressed the hope that the authorities in Kurdistan Region would come to their senses and give up the Israeli plot.

Officials in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region have said the northern territory would hold the independence referendum on September 25.

Masoud Barzani, the president of the Iraqi Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), announced the vote on June 7.

Earlier this month, Iraqi parliamentarians have rejected the legitimacy of the vote and the central government in Baghdad which is strongly opposed to this move has said it will do everything possible to keep the unity of the country intact.

Iraq’s neighbors, including Iran and Turkey, are also strongly opposed to such a move.