IRAN’S Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has broken cover for the first time since the 12-day war that saw the US and Israel strike Iran’s nuclear sites.
The 85-year-old appeared smiling on Saturday at a packed Tehran mosque – after reports he had spent days in a “secure location”;.
It was Khamenei’s first live appearance since war broke out on June 13, when Israeli forces launched a sudden wave of airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear sites.
The US joined in days later, bombing three major sites on June 22 – including the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Facility.
Top Iranian military commanders and nuclear scientists were reportedly , forcing Khamenei to vanish from public view.
Since the air war began, he has given only prerecorded speeches – sparking rumours about his safety.
But footage aired by Iranian state media on Saturday showed the leader smiling and waving to a crowd of chanting supporters at a mosque.
Dozens of people were seen attending the event to markAshura – the holiest day of the Shia Muslim calendar.
It comes 11 days after the 12-day war between Iran, Israel and the US.
Following the ceasefire between Iran and Israel, Khamenei appeared on state TV, boasting that Iran had dealt a “slap to America’s face”; with a missile strike on a US airbase in Qatar.
He said: “The American regime entered a direct war because it felt that if it did not, the Zionist regime would be completely destroyed.
“However, it gained no achievements from this war.
“Here, too, the Islamic Republic emerged victorious, and in return, the Islamic Republic delivered a severe slap to America’s face.”;
US President Donald Trump took to social media to mock the claim and bragged that he had personally blocked an attempt to kill Khamenei.
In a Truth Social post, FROM A VERY UGLY AND IGNOMINIOUS DEATH.
“And he does not have to say, ‘THANK YOU, PRESIDENT TRUMP!’
“I knew EXACTLY where he was sheltered, and would not let Israel, or the U.S. Armed Forces, by far the Greatest and Most Powerful in the World, terminate his life.”;
Israeli officials had openly hinted that Khamenei was “not off the table”; as a potential target during the air war.
But at the start of the war Trump claimed that while Khamenei was an “easy target”;, the US was “not going to take him out... at least not for now”;.
The US president also blasted the Iranian leader’s claims that Iran won the war.
He wrote: “Why would the so-called ‘Supreme Leader,’ Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, of the war-torn Country of Iran, say so blatantly and foolishly that he won the War with Israel, when he knows his statement is a lie, it is not so.
“As a man of great faith, he is not supposed to lie.”;
It comes as Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi – one of Iran’s most hardline clerics – calling for the deaths of both Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, branding them “enemies of God”;.
