Ali Khamenei also said that the U.S. airstrikes to a nuclear facility caused little damage.
By Catholics for Catholics
Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said it had given the United States a “slap to America’s face” when it attacked an American base in Qatar.
Newsmax reported that Khamenei, speaking for the first time publicly since the 12-day war ceasefire between Israel and Iran, communicated through a recorded video that was broadcast via Iranian state television. The 86-year-old leader looked tired, more than he did a week ago, at times stumbling and talking in a hoarse voice.
In a 10-minute speech, Khamenei talked down Sunday’s American strikes on three Iranian nuclear spots using bunker attack bombs and cruise missiles. He added that President Donald Trump — who said the attack “completely and fully obliterated Iran’s nuclear program — had “exaggerated” its effect.
“They could not achieve anything significant,” he said.
Nevertheless, Newsmax reported that Rafael Grossi, U.N. nuclear watchdog, International Atomic Energy Agency Director, begged to differ. He said that the airstrikes conducted by Israeli and American forces to Iran’s nuclear sites “is very, very, very considerable.”
“I think annihilated is too much but it suffered enormous damage,” Grossi told French broadcaster RFI.
Khamenei has not been viewed in public since taking shelter in an undisclosed place after the outbreak of the war June 13, when Israel attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and targeted top military commanders and scientists.
After Sunday’s U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear sites, Trump was able to help deal a ceasefire that came into effect on Tuesday.
Khamenei, reported Newsmax, claimed the U.S. had only intervened in the war because “it felt that if it did not intervene, the Zionist regime would be utterly destroyed.”
“It entered the war to save them, yet it gained nothing,” he said.
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