Iran’s Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, has vowed to exact revenge on Israel and the United States for the assassination of his father and predecessor, Ali Khamenei.
The older Khamenei was killed on February 28 in an airstrike that marked the beginning of the U.S.–Israeli military conflict against Iran.
“Revenge is the demand of the nation and must certainly be carried out,” according to a written statement attributed to Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba, which was broadcast on state television.
“We pledge to avenge the blood of the martyred leader and all the martyrs of these two wars from the criminal and disgraced killers,” Mojtaba said, adding that Iran’s “vengeance” was “inevitable.”
Mojtaba Khamenei’s Saturday remarks coincided with Iran’s multi-day funeral rites for the late supreme leader.
The new leader has not made a public appearance since the airstrike that killed his father, following U.S. reports suggesting he was severely injured in the late-February attack.
His statements came a day after U.S. President Donald Trump revealed in an interview with The New York Post that Tehran had been trying to assassinate him for years. Trump warned of severe consequences, stating he had already “left instructions” for an overwhelming military response if Iran successfully kills him.
“I’ve been on their list for a long time,” Trump said. “I’ve left instructions — if anything happens, to just literally bomb them at levels that they’ve never seen before.”
The U.S. president emphasized that while Iran has long targeted him, there was no new intelligence indicating an imminent assassination plot.
As both nations escalate their rhetoric, mediators are actively working to revive diplomatic channels. Iran’s Tasnim news agency reported on Friday that a Qatari delegation visited Iran in an effort to reinforce Qatar’s role as a mediator.
Backstory…
On July 4, Iran State television reported that funeral rites for Ali Khamenei officially began on Saturday, drawing thousands of mourners in what authorities intended as a demonstration of strength to the Islamic Republic of Iran‘s adversaries.
Iranian officials also predicted that over the next three days, between 15 and 20 million people will attend homage to the man who led the nation for three and a half decades in Tehran alone.
Khamenei, who governed the Islamic republic as its leader from 1989 till his death on February 28 at the age of 86 on the first day of the US-Israeli war with Iran, will be honoured with six days of burial rites
Read Also: War: Iran’s Supreme Leader Warns US, Says ‘You’ll End at Bottom of the Sea’
