US President Donald Trump has claimed that Iran has lost military capabilities and its top commanders in the US-Israeli strikes on the Islamic republic. He also claimed that Iran’s supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, who had been noticeably missing from his father, the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s, funeral last week, was also “90 per cent gone.”
“They have no navy, they have no air force, it’s all gone. Their anti-aircraft is gone, their leaders have all been killed, their best leaders have been killed,” Trump said, speaking in an interview with Fox News.
Trump further claimed that Iran’s best leaders have been killed in the war. “They’re gone. Khomeini is gone,” the president said, using the name of the late Iranian revolutionary leader who died in 1989, while apparently referring to Ali Khamenei, who was killed on the first day of the war on February 28.
“His son is 90 per cent gone,” he added.
Mojtaba Khamenei has not been seen in public since February 28, when he was injured in the same US and Israeli strikes that also killed his father. His ongoing absence has sparked significant public speculation about his health and whereabouts.
The War
Trump’s remarks came as the US and Iran exchanged renewed strikes over the weekend, marking the end of a months-long ceasefire. The US president has also formally notified Congress that military action against Iran resumed last week as he ordered multiple rounds of strikes on Iranian targets.
He also separately suggested the United States will charge other ships for safe passage, upending hundreds of years of American policy supporting freedom of navigation across the globe.
Iran responded with attacks targeting Bahrain and two tankers associated with the United Arab Emirates travelling through the strait, killing one mariner of Indian origin and wounding eight others. The Emirates threatened to retaliate against Iran, potentially drawing the nation home to Abu Dhabi and Dubai back into fighting with Tehran.
The attacks come as Iran and the US both vie for control of the Strait of Hormuz through which a fifth of all crude oil and natural gas once passed in peacetime.
