Mojtaba vows continued resistance

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”. On Telegram, he 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 has not been seen in public since taking over from his father following his killing on Feb 28. He closed his message with condolences to the kin of those killed in what he described as “the war imposed by the US and the Zionist regime against the great nation of Iran”.