Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the country had “slapped America in the face” with its recent missile attack on a US airbase in Qatar, and warned similar attacks would occur in future if needed.
It was the supreme leader’s first televised address in a week, and came shortly before the US secretary of defence Pete Hegseth held a press conference to repeat claims an American bombing raid on Iran at the weekend was a resounding success.
But a pre-recorded video may have done little to alleviate concerns about the future of the ayatollah’s future, who has been notably absent in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s attack.
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“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 nearby Qatar on Monday, which caused no casualties.
“The fact that the Islamic Republic has access to important American centres in the region and can take action against them whenever it deems necessary is not a small incident, it is a major incident, and this incident can be repeated in the future if an attack is made.
“Should any aggression occur, the enemy will definitely pay a heavy price.”
The ayatollah went on to claim the US had only intervened in the war because “it felt that if it did not, the Zionist regime would be utterly destroyed”, adding that the United States “achieved no gains” from the conflict.
Mr Khamenei, 86, has not been seen in public since taking shelter in a secret location after the outbreak of the war 13 June, when Israel attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed several top military commanders and nuclear scientists, including members of their family.
The last time Iranians saw Mr Khamenei in a similar message on 19 June he was railing against the United States and vowing he would “not surrender”.
Mr Khamenei has ruled Iran for 36 years. He was imprisoned before the 1979 revolution and maimed by a bomb attack before becoming leader in 1989. He is committed to maintaining Iran’s Islamic system of government and deeply mistrustful of the West.
Several of Mr Khamenei’s main military and security advisers were killed in Israeli airstrikes during what the Americans have dubbed the “12-day war”. Five people familiar with his decision-making process told Reuters those deaths have left major holes in his inner circle, increasing the risk of “extremely dangerous” strategic errors.
Among those killed were the overall commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Hossein Salami, the head of Iran’s ballistic missile program and aerospace chief Amir Ali Hajizadeh, and spymaster Mohammad Kazemi.
Foreign support Tehran may have expected from China and Russia never materialised. And Iran’s network of militant proxy groups – the “Axis of Resistance” – once wielded significant power across the Middle East. But now, those groups including Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthi rebels in Yemen, are in disarray, having been badly damaged since the Hamas October 7 2023 attack on Israel.
Following Israel’s attack on Iran, a group of industry leaders across business, politics, the military and religion began working on a plan to run the country without Mr Khamenei, two sources involved in those discussions told The Atlantic.
“Ours is just one idea,” one person involved in conversations told the publication. “Tehran is now full of such plots … Everybody knows Khamenei’s days are numbered.”
After the US attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, that person told The Atlantic that the chances of succeeding in taking power from Mr Khamenei had increased.
Hamidreza Azizi, a visiting fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, told the Associated Press that the most pressing task for Mr Khamenei will be rooting out any disloyalty among his advisers.
“There must be some sort of purge. But who will implement it? That is the question,” he said.
Mr Azizi said the war could fuel a change in the Islamic Republic itself, pushing the country’s leadership towards a military-led rule rather than the current hierarchy which places Shia clerics at the top.
“People have been talking of a transition from clergy-dominated Islamic Republic to a military-dominated Islamic Republic,” Mr Azizi said.
“This war has made that scenario more plausible. The next government will be more military-security oriented.”
It was Iran’s military leaders and senior politicians who spoke out after the American bombings, which combined with the supreme leader’s public absence, led some Iranians to publicly question Mr Khamenei’s condition.
A host on Iranian state television asked an official from Mr Khamenei’s office about the wellbeing of the country’s leader, the New York Times reports.
The official, Mehdi Fazaeli, said the office had received many inquiries from people worried about the supreme leader, and said: “We should all be praying.”
He added: “God willing, our people can celebrate victory next to their leader, God willing.”
With additional reporting from AP
