Iran's Khamenei says US failed to achieve anything significant
TEHRAN — Iran's supreme leader Ayatallah Ali Khamenei delivered his first video message since US strikes on his country and Iran's ceasefire with Israel.
Khamenei downplayed the impact of the US strike on three of the country's nuclear sites, suggesting they had "failed to achieve anything significant".
This directly contradicts Donald Trump's claims that the US had "obliterated" Iran's nuclear program when 125 military aircraft targeted the sites of Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan.
Speaking at the Nato summit in the Netherlands on Wednesday, Trump rejected a Pentagon intelligence report that suggested the US had only set back Iran's programme "by a few months".
Instead, Trump insisted that the nuclear sites in Iran were "completely destroyed" and accused the media of "an attempt to demean one of the most successful military strikes in history".
Standing alongside Trump at the Nato podium, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also dismissed the report, and argued that the evidence of what had been bombed "is buried under a mountain, devastated and obliterated".
And this was followed-up by CIA director John Radcliffe, who later said there was "credible intelligence" Iran's nuclear programme had been "severely damaged".
Iran's supreme leader said the US military action was never about nuclear issues or nuclear enrichment — but about "surrender".
One day it's about human rights, another day it's about women's rights, then it's about the nuclear issue, then about the missiles, he said.
But he added that actually in its core, it had always been about one thing: they want Iran to surrender.
Khamenei continued, saying that the Iranian people demonstrated their unity — sending a message that "our people are one voice".
He said Trump called on Iran to "surrender", but his comments were 'too big for the mouth of the president of the United States'.
"For a great country and nation like Iran, the very mention of surrender is an insult," Khamenei added.
He said Trump accidentally revealed a truth — that the Americans have been opposing the Islamic Republic of Iran from the very beginning.
He said Trump had made an 'unusually exaggerated' account of what had taken place.
It was clear he needed to do it, said Khamenei, adding that anyone listening could tell the US were overstating things to distort the truth.
"We attacked one of the US's key bases in the region, and here, they tried to downplay it," he said. — BBC
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