Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has shared his first public statement after a ceasefire was announced between Iran and Israel.
In a video address broadcast on Iranian state TV on Thursday (June 25), Khamenei, 86, spoke for the first time since June 19.
The leader, who had reportedly taken shelter in a secret location after Israeli forces launched surprise strikes on Iranian nuclear sites and key military figures, claimed that the United States only stepped in diplomatically because it feared Israel’s complete destruction.
“The U.S. intervened because it felt that if it did not, the Zionist regime would be utterly destroyed,” he said, before asserting, “the U.S. achieved no gains from this war," per Associated Press.
Calling the conflict a victory for Iran, he referenced the retaliatory missile attack earlier this week on a U.S. base in Qatar, which caused no casualties: “The Islamic Republic was victorious and, in retaliation, delivered a hand slap to America’s face.”
Khamenei’s remarks came just days after U.S. President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire, negotiated after a June 22 American airstrike targeted Iran’s nuclear facilities using bunker-buster bombs.
In his national address following the operation, the 79-year-old said: “The US military carried out massive precision strikes on the three key nuclear assemblies in the Iranian regime: Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan.”
Trump stated the objective was to eliminate Iran’s nuclear enrichment capabilities and added that “Iran must now make peace," and warned that if they do not, "future attacks would be far greater and a lot easier".
He doubled down on Truth Social, warning: “Any retaliation by Iran against the United States of America will be met with force far greater than what was witnessed tonight.”
Vice President J.D. Vance echoed those sentiments, saying the goal was “to bury the uranium” and end Iran’s capacity to weaponize it. “Our goal was to eliminate the enrichment and eliminate their ability to convert that enriched fuel into a nuclear weapon,” he added.
However, nuclear policy expert Jeffrey Lewis challenged the administration’s claims in a CNN interview. “Yeah, none of that is true,” Lewis said, pointing out that Iran had time to relocate nuclear material before the strikes and that underground bunkers likely remain operational.
“We watched them bring trucks to the site. They buried the entrances to protect the site. So, if they had wanted to move the material, they certainly could have,” he explained.
Lewis emphasized that Iran maintains several hardened facilities and argued that diplomacy, not force, will ultimately be necessary.
“They are ultimately going to need the cooperation of the Iranians. They’re going to need some kind of diplomatic process,” he said.
Meanwhile, the supposed ceasefire continues to look shaky. Trump expressed irritation at ongoing hostilities from both parties, particularly after Israel conducted new airstrikes following the deal.
“Israel, as soon as we made the deal, they came out and they dropped a load of bombs, the likes of which I’ve never seen before,” he said at a White House press briefing on June 24. “I’m not happy with Israel. I’m not happy with Iran either.”
The president didn’t hold back in his assessment of the conflict: “We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f*** they’re doing.”