Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said the United States hit Tehran’s nuclear sites but achieved ‘nothing significant’, as he vowed his country would ‘never surrender’ to its enemies.
Khamenei condemned what he called Donald Trump’s ‘showmanship’ and claimed that the US President ‘exaggerated’ the impact of the strikes on three nuclear sites.
The supreme leader also claimed victory over Israel in his first public comments since a ceasefire was declared in the war between the two countries.
Khamenei broke his silence on the US strikes in a video broadcast on Iranian state television from his bunker hideout, his first appearance since June 19.
He taunted Israel further by saying that the US had only decided to join the bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites on June 21 because ‘it felt that if it did not intervene, the Zionist regime would be utterly destroyed.’
He repeated his previous declaration that surrender to the US would ‘never happen’ and boasted that America had ‘achieved no gains from this war,’ unlike Tehran.
‘The Islamic Republic was victorious and, in retaliation, delivered a hand slap to America’s face,’ he claimed, in apparent reference to an Iranian missile attack on an American base in Qatar on Monday, which caused no casualties.
Khamenei hasn’t been seen in public since taking shelter in a secret location after the outbreak of the war June 13 when Israel attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and targeted top military commanders and scientists.
Following a massive American attack on June 22 that hit the nuclear sites with bunker-buster bombs, Trump was able to help negotiate a ceasefire that came into effect on Tuesday.
Khamenei did release a video message on June 19 during the war, and Iranian state television and the supreme leader’s own social media pages announced that he would be releasing another video message to Iran on Thursday.
In his first comment posted on X earlier, he offered his ‘congratulations on the victory’ over Israel.
Shortly after Khamenei delivered his speech, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shared a statement saying he would continue to work with President Trump to ‘defeat our common enemies, free our hostages, and quickly expand the circle of peace’.
Netanyahu posted the message with a picture of himself and Trump holding hands, alongside his statement and an earlier post by the US leader saying they had ‘been through hell together.’
