Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei took aim at U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent visit to Israel during a speech in Tehran on Monday, calling his Knesset address “empty words” and “buffoonery.”
Trump addressed the Knesset on Oct. 13, thanking the Israeli military for its role in destroying Iran’s nuclear program as part of “Operation Rising Lion” in mid-June, saying that if Tehran had built the bomb, then there would not have been a deal with Hamas.
“The U.S. president tried to give hope and boost the morale of the disappointed Zionists in Occupied Palestine. … This is my analysis of the U.S. president’s trip,” Khamenei said at a meeting with winners of international scientific Olympiads and sports champions, the semi-official Tasnim News Agency reported.
Khamenei has also treated the brief war as an Iranian victory, despite Israel successfully striking several nuclear sites in the country, as well as heavily bombed Iran’s anti-aircraft defenses and missile stockpiles.
“In the 12-day war, they were slapped so hard that they couldn’t believe it, didn’t expect it and became disheartened,” the Iranian stated of the Israelis.
Likely referring to a June 15 attack by Iran on the Weizmann Institute of Sciene in the city of Rehovot, Khamenei said that “the Zionists did not expect that an Iranian missile, crafted by the hands of Iranian youth, could, with its flames of fire, turn some of their sensitive research centers into ashes.”
Israel’s attack on Iran targeted its main nuclear sites. However, Iran’s enriched nuclear stockpile, which the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) estimated at 440 kilograms in a leaked June report, may have largely survived.
Rafael Grossi, head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, who is running for the office of U.N. Secretary-General, told Neue Zürcher Zeitung on Oct. 18, “According to our information, the majority of this uranium is still in the nuclear facilities in Isfahan and Fordow, and partly also in Natanz.”
Although the three facilities were “massively damaged,” uranium stored at the sites appears to have been largely unharmed, he said. The IAEA estimates that Iran still has about 400 kilograms, Grossi told the Swiss paper.
