Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei took a dig at US President Donald Trump over his call that “Iran must surrender”. In a post on X on Friday, Khamenei wrote, “US President stated, ‘Iran must surrender.’ Needless to say, this statement is too big to come out of the US president’s mouth.”
During the conflict with Israel last week, Trump had shared a message on TRUTH, seemingly for Iran, saying, “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” He had also emphasised that he is seeking “a real end” to the conflict, or Iran “giving up entirely, that is okay too.”
Trump also claimed that US’ strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites “completely and totally obliterated Iran’s nuclear program.”
But the Iranian supreme leader pushed back on that assessment.
In his first public remarks since the US bombed three Iranian nuclear sites Saturday, Khamenei declared victory in the conflict and pushed back on Trump’s claims that the strikes were a “spectacular military success.”
“My congratulations on our dear Iran’s victory over the US regime. The US regime entered the war directly because it felt that if it didn’t, the Zionist regime would be completely destroyed,” Khamenei said in his more-than 10 minute address, according to a translated passage posted to his account on the social platform X.
“It entered the war in an effort to save that regime but achieved nothing,” he added.
Iran will ‘never surrender’
Earlier on June 26, Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that Iran would “never surrender” to the US, in his first remarks since a ceasefire in the war with Israel took hold.
“The American president indicated in one of his statements that Iran must surrender. Surrender! It is no longer a question of enrichment, nor of the nuclear industry, but of the surrender of Iran,” said Khamenei in a televised speech.
“Such an event (surrender) will never happen. It will never happen,” he said.
The conflict between Iran and Israel began on June 13 when Israel launched a large-scale airstrike targeting Iranian military and nuclear facilities under “Operation Rising Lion”. Iran responded by launching “Operation True Promise 3”, a campaign involving missile and drone attacks against Israel’s infrastructure.
