Iran's supreme leader said Monday the United States was seeking to influence next month's elections in the Islamic republic but said such efforts would receive a "punch in the mouth".<br />Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's comments related to parliamentary polls and a ballot for the Assembly of Experts, a powerful committee of clerics who will pick the country's next supreme leader when the incumbent, who is 76, dies.<br />Both elections take place on February 26.<br />Political moderates and reformists are seeking to wrest back control of the currently conservative-dominated 290 member parliament on the back of President Hassan Rouhani's nuclear deal with world powers last year.<br />Khamenei told a meeting of prayer leaders that attempts by "enemies" to distance Iran from its revolutionary mandate would fail.
