Iran’s new supreme leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei has marked Army Day by vowing continued resistance against what he called “the two armies at the forefront of infidelity and arrogance”.
In a message via Telegram, Khamenei said the Iranian army “has exposed their weakness and humiliation to the world,” and “its drones strike the American and Zionist criminals like lightning”.
“Its brave navy is ready to make the enemies taste the bitterness of new defeats,” he warned, Al Jazeera reported.
Khamenei framed the latest war as a continuation of Iran’s revolutionary tradition, connecting the 1979 Islamic Revolution through two previous “imposed wars” to the present conflict.
He said the army “has stood in its rightful place” since the revolution, describing it as “truly the son of the nation” that “comes from the hearts of the people”.
He paid tribute to his predecessor and assassinated father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, describing him as one who “made the most effort since the first decade of the revolution to preserve the army” and enhance its capabilities.
Mojtaba Khamenei has not been seen in public since taking over from his father following his killing at the start of the war in February.
He closed his message with condolences to the families of those killed in what he described as “the war imposed by the United States and the Zionist regime against the great nation of Iran”.
bd-pratidin/GR
