Iran’s new supreme leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei delivered his first public remarks on the war on Thursday in a statement that, as the Associated Press reported, was read by a news anchor rather than delivered on camera. In the speech, he did not specify his condition or state where he was located, according to the AP account.
The report said an Israeli assessment indicates Mojtaba Khamenei was wounded in the war’s opening salvo, and it said he was likely in a secure, secret location to avoid a threatened Israeli operation to kill him. The AP also connected that threat to a start-of-war attack that killed Mojtaba Khamenei’s father, former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
In his comments on neighboring countries, Mojtaba Khamenei said those states must “clarify their position” regarding those he described as attacking Iran and killing members of “our people.” He said he recommended they “shut down those bases as soon as possible,” arguing that by then the neighbors should have realized the United States’ claims of providing security and peace had been “nothing more than a lie.”
On the Strait of Hormuz, the statement said, “The lever of closing the Strait of Hormuz must certainly continue to be used as well.” The speech added that studies had been conducted on opening other fronts that, it said, the enemy had little experience with and could be highly vulnerable to; it said those actions would be activated “if the wartime situation continues and in accordance with considerations of expediency.”
Mojtaba Khamenei also addressed the death of his father, Ali Khamenei. The AP reported that he said, “I had the honor of seeing his body after his martyrdom,” and added that what he saw was “a mountain of steadfastness,” along with an account that he was told the fist of his father’s intact hand had been clenched.
On retaliation and the scope of future action, the statement said Mojtaba Khamenei assured “everyone that we will not refrain from avenging the blood of your martyrs.” The AP reported that he said the retaliation Iran has in mind would not be limited to what he described as the killing of the “great leader of the Revolution,” but would treat each death of a nation member killed by the enemy as a separate case in a “file of revenge.”
In remarks tied to a deadly strike that hit a school, the statement said a “limited portion of this retaliation” had already taken tangible form. It then said that until retaliation was “fully achieved,” the “file will remain open above other cases,” and that Iran would be “especially sensitive regarding the blood of our children”; the AP report quoted him describing the “crime the enemy deliberately committed against the Shajareh-Tayyebeh school in Minab” and saying similar cases would hold a “special status” in the process of accountability.
The Associated Press reported that the statement concluded with thanks “to our brave fighters” who, it said, blocked the enemy’s path with “powerful blows” and dispelled what it described as illusions of dominating Iran or dividing it.