Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei declared on Thursday that the United States had suffered a shameful defeat, defiantly rejecting a warning from President Donald Trump that an economically punishing US naval blockade could be enforced for months to come.
“Today, two months after the largest military deployment and aggression by the world’s bullies in the region, and the United States’ disgraceful defeat in its plans, a new chapter is unfolding for the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz,” said Khamenei in the message read on state television.
The message by Khamenei, who has yet to appear in public since his appointment on March 9 as Iran’s new supreme leader, came on the annual national celebration of “Persian Gulf” day in Iran.
Khamenei became the supreme leader after the US and Israel launched a massive campaign of strikes on Iran on February 28, assassinating his father and predecessor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
In his Thursday message, he said US bases in the region “lack even the capacity to ensure their own security, let alone provide any hope of securing their allies.”
He hailed what he called Iran’s “new legal framework and management” of the strategic Strait of Hormuz, a key energy chokepoint, as a means to bring “comfort and progress” for countries in the region.
The strait has become a major flashpoint since the outbreak of the Middle East war, with Iran allowing only a trickle of ships to pass through the waterway.
Khamenei, in his message, predicted a bright future for the Gulf without the US and condemned what he described as “outsiders”, saying those who interfere from thousands of kilometres away “have no place there except at the bottom of its waters”.
“The record of repeated invasions by European and American foreigners —the insecurities, damages, and multiple threats they have imposed on the region’s countries — reflects only a fraction of the malicious schemes of global oppressors against the peoples of the Persian Gulf,” the message read.
He also lauded the people of Iran, who he said “consider all national capacities — identity, spiritual, human, scientific, industrial, and advanced technologies from nano and bio to nuclear and missile — as their national capital”.
Earlier on Thursday, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian had said a US naval blockade imposed in retaliation against Iran’s action in Hormuz was “doomed to fail”.
Pezeshkian added that such measures would “not only fail to enhance regional security, but are in fact a source of tension and a disruption to lasting stability in the Persian Gulf”.
Other figures have also struck a tone of defiance, with Navy Commander Shahram Irani signalling that Iran will deploy “in the very near future” naval weaponry which it has recently developed.
