KLIK SAJA - Iran’s Supreme Leader has asserted that the United States “achieved nothing” from its strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, in his first public address since a ceasefire agreement with Israel was announced last Tuesday.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei stated that the attacks did not “achieve anything significant” in disrupting Iran’s nuclear program, and described Iran’s retaliatory strike on a US air base in Qatar as a “heavy blow.”
His remarks came as Washington doubled down on its position that the strikes had seriously weakened Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that intelligence gathered by the US and Israel indicated the operation had “significantly damaged the nuclear program, setting it back by years.”
Earlier, US President Donald Trump claimed the strikes on three key nuclear sites in Iran had “totally obliterated” them, and reacted angrily to reports citing anonymous American officials suggesting the damage may have been less extensive than initially believed.
Speaking alongside senior General Dan Caine at a Pentagon press briefing on Thursday morning, Hegseth described the mission as a “historic success” that had “rendered [Iran’s] enrichment facilities inoperable.”
During a heated Q&A session with reporters, Hegseth also said that the US had “no intelligence” indicating enriched uranium had been moved out of Fordo—the deeply buried facility targeted with bunker-buster bombs—prior to the strikes.
Khamenei, who had largely remained out of the public eye since direct conflict with Israel broke out on June 13, delivered his address via a televised broadcast on Thursday morning, ending a week-long public silence.
The Supreme Leader was reportedly sheltering in a bunker and limiting communication, prompting speculation about his whereabouts. Iranian authorities did not reveal the location from which he spoke, although a senior official had earlier confirmed he was in a secure location earlier this week.
In his address, Khamenei threatened to launch further attacks on US bases in the Middle East if Iran were to be attacked again, and declared victory over both Israel and the United States.
Khamenei said Trump had “exaggerated” the impact of the strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites, adding, “They achieved nothing and failed to meet their objectives.”
Referring to the attack on the US air base in Qatar, Khamenei said, “This incident may well be repeated in the future, and should another attack occur, the cost for the enemy and the aggressor will undoubtedly be very high.”
No casualties were reported from that attack, which Trump said had been pre-announced. The US confirmed the base sustained no damage.
Direct confrontation between Iran and Israel began on June 13, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that “if not stopped, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time.”
A day earlier, the board of governors of the global nuclear watchdog had declared that Iran was in violation of its non-proliferation obligations for the first time in two decades.
