Amid speculations about Iran’s policy on Israel under the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Thursday met with the country’s senior-most forum on national strategy.
Khamenei said that he had met with the Assembly of Experts of the Leadership, which has 88 members, at the Imam Khomeini Hussainia, which is a large conference hall in Tehran.
“Some people in Lebanon and elsewhere think that Hezbollah has weakened and have begun to criticize its actions. They are mistaken and have illusions. Hezbollah is strong and is continuing to fight”, Khamenei said on Thursday, according to the IRNA outlet.
He added: “The enemy has been unable to overcome this organization, and God willing, it will not be able to do so. The world and the region will one day witness that the Zionist regime will clearly be defeated at the hands of these fighters struggling in the path of God.”
According to IRNA, Khamenei eulogized Hezbollah’s former top terrorist Hassan Nasrallah, assassinated by Israel in a Beirut strike on Sept. 27, and Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s terror master who was killed by Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip on Oct. 16.
During his first term in the White House, Trump, who won the 2024 presidential elections on Tuesday, inflicted sanctions on Iran for its pursuit of nuclear weapons and took the United States out of an agreement in 2018 with the Islamic Republic forged three years earlier by his predecessor, Barack Obama.
U.S. President Joe Biden has said that he would not support an Israeli airstrike on Iran’s nuclear sites.
