Iranian ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that Iran has delivered a “slap to America’s face” before the ceasefire went into effect. The ruler of Iran claimed that by striking a United States military base in Qatar, a warning was issued against further attacks.
These comments were the first from Khamenei since the ceasefire with Israel went into effect. The supreme leader downplayed U.S. strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites Sunday using bunker-buster bombs and cruise missiles, saying that U.S. President Donald Trump — who said the attack “completely and fully obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program — had exaggerated its impact, according to a report by The Associated Press.
The White House claimed that Iran was trying to save face when it made the comments. “Any commonsense, open-minded person knows the truth about the precision strikes on Saturday night,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Thursday. “They were wildly successful,” she said of the U.S.’s strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
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The U.S. continues to say it caused significant destruction of the three nuclear sites, but others disagree. “I think annihilated is too much, but it suffered enormous damage,” Grossi told French broadcaster RFI. The IAEA has not been allowed to visit any of the Iranian facilities to do an independent assessment of the damage.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, also conceded Wednesday that “our nuclear installations have been badly damaged, that’s for sure.” Baghaei stopped short of saying that they were completely destroyed, however.
Khamenei claimed the U.S. had only interved in the war because “it felt that if it did not intervene, the Zionist regime would be utterly destroyed.
It does appear that both Israel and Iran have now gotten the memo that they are supposed to stop bombing each other, at least for the time being. The ceasefire agreement has been vague from the beginning, however. At least that’s one step in the right direction, even though the rulers are still trading verbal jabs over who has done what during the “12 day war.”
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