Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Thursday claimed victory in the 12-day war with Israel, dismissed the US's claim of destroying Iran's nuclear sites and promised retaliation against US bases in the region, if attacked.
A report on Al Jazeera carried Khamenei's speech, which came two days into a precarious ceasefire that took hold after Iran fired missiles at the US air base in Qatar, the largest one in the region, as all three parties claimed success in this tripartite conflict.
"The US President Trump unveiled the truth and made it clear that Americans won't be satisfied with anything less than the surrender of Iran … such an event will never happen," Khamenei said.
"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," he added.
The speech also comes amid discordant accounts in the US over the extent of the damage inflicted by US attacks on key Iranian nuclear sites at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan during the conflict. Trump maintained that the strikes obliterated the nuclear facilities.
On Wednesday, when asked if the US would strike again if Iran rebuilt its nuclear enrichment programme, Trump said, "Sure".
However, Khamenei said Trump had exaggerated the impact of the attacks and said the US gained nothing from this war, claiming the US strikes did nothing significant to Iran's nuclear facilities.
"The Islamic Republic dealt a severe slap to America in the face. It attacked one of the important American bases in the region," Khamenei said.
Meanwhile, in response to a leaked intelligence report suggesting the military's strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities likely put the country back by mere months, on a Thursday morning briefing, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth bolstered Trump's previous claim that the nuclear facilities have been obliterated.
US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard also repeated Trump's version of events. Previously, on March 25, she testified before Congress that the US intelligence community had concluded Iran was not building nuclear weapons, but changed her statement afterwards when US President Donald Trump said she was wrong on Friday, June 21.
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