Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has warned that Iran would respond to any further U.S. attacks by targeting American military bases in the Middle East, while declaring what he described as a “total victory” over Israel.
“The Islamic Republic slapped America in the face. It attacked one of the important American bases in the region,” Khamenei said during his first televised remarks since a ceasefire was reached to end the 12-day conflict between Iran and Israel.
However, leaked U.S. intelligence suggests that the damage to Iran’s nuclear program may not be as severe as Trump has alluded. CIA director John Ratcliffe said on Wednesday that the sites had been “severely damaged” by the strikes, short of the damage described by the President.
Khamenei also criticized President Trump’s call for the Islamic Republic’s “unconditional surrender”, posted on TruthSocial on June 17, calling it “unacceptable and illogical.”
Earlier in the conflict, Trump had suggested the possibility of regime change in Iran. “If the current Iranian Regime is unable to make Iran great again, why wouldn’t there be a regime change???” he said.
But on Tuesday, en route to the NATO Summit, Trump appeared to backtrack. “I’d like to see everything calm down as quickly as possible,” he told reporters onboard Air Force One.
The conflict began after Israel attacked military and nuclear facilities across Iran on June 13, killing key military and scientific personnel. After the strikes, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described Operation Rising Lion as an attack to “roll back the Iranian threat to Israel’s very survival” and that “the goal of Israel’s operation is to prevent the nuclear and ballistic missile threat of the Islamic regime.”
Read more: Air Supremacy Over Tehran Gives Israel a Decisive Edge—And Raises New Risks
Khamenei told viewers on Thursday that the U.S. had only intervened because “if it didn’t, the Zionist regime would be completely destroyed,” claiming that Israel “was practically knocked out and crushed under the blows of the Islamic Republic.”
During the almost two week-long conflict, 974 Iranians were killed in Israeli missile strikes, including 387 civilians and 268 military personnel, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency.
In Israel, the Prime Minister’s Office confirmed a total of 28 people killed as a result of Iranian missile strikes.