A message attributed to Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not been seen in public since being gravely wounded on 28 March, has been broadcast by Iranian state television. The regime's credibility problem is hiding in plain sight.
Mojtaba Khamenei © Mena Today
Iranian state television broadcast a remarkable message Thursday, attributed to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, declaring that the United States had suffered a "humiliating defeat" two months into the war triggered by the joint Israeli-American offensive against Iran.
There is just one problem. Khamenei has not been seen in public since 28 March. No image, no appearance, no verifiable proof of life. Sources close to the Iranian leadership suggest he was gravely wounded in the strikes. Some go further.
Yet according to Tehran, this same man - unable to show his face to the world - somehow found the strength to craft a polished political statement declaring that "a new chapter opens for the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz."
The message itself is a masterpiece of creative fiction. The United States, which deployed two carrier strike groups, tens of thousands of troops and dozens of combat aircraft to the region, has apparently been humiliated. Iran, whose supreme leader is missing, whose economy Donald Trump describes as being in "a state of collapse," and whose military has been severely degraded, has apparently won.
The regime is not speaking to Washington or Jerusalem. It is speaking to its own population, and hoping they still believe it.
Increasingly, that is a very big ask.
Senior Israeli and Lebanese officials denied on Thursday that there had been any Israeli withdrawal from occupied southern Lebanon, after a U.S. official said Israel had pulled some troops back in a good faith gesture toward Lebanon's government.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will meet with Bahrain officials on Thursday on the final leg of a trip to the Middle East where he has sought to sell the Trump administration's preliminary Iran accord to skeptical Gulf Arab allies.
The Syrian Liberal Party has issued a bold call for a decisive international military alliance to disarm Hezbollah and restore full stability to Lebanon, proposing that Beirut formally request assistance from the existing US-sponsored international counterterrorism coalition.
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