Photo: ninara (archive)
The path to absolute deterrence lies in an “even more powerful Iran,” Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei said on Wednesday, in a message marking the “National Day of Fighting Global Arrogance.”
Khamenei warned that Iran’s response to any renewed US aggression would be on a much greater scale, adding that Tehran’s destruction of US bases in the region and its management of the Strait of Hormuz had been part of a campaign against US hegemony.
“The US sees the end of its hegemony as distant; we see it as near,” he said.
Washington’s hostility towards Tehran will not change through partisan shifts or any concessions to the US, and those who believe otherwise are “greatly mistaken”, Khamenei also said, in response to the Republican Party’s defeats in the US midterm elections.
Mediators push for progress in US-Iran negotiations
In recent days, efforts were made to achieve a breakthrough in negotiations between Tehran and Washington and to secure significant progress that could avert an American military strike. The efforts involved several mediators, including Qatar, Russia, and China.
Iranian Supreme National Security Council Secretary Mohsen Rezaei, who recently received a letter from US Vice President JD Vance, wrote on Tuesday on X/Twitter that “the United States’ response regarding Iran’s rights and demands was not convincing.”
Rezaei stressed that Washington must provide a full and explicit response to Iran’s seven conditions. Only then, he said, would “the Strait of Hormuz be opened.”
Amichai Stein and Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report.
