Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has made his first public appearance since the outbreak of his country’s recent 12-day war with Israel, taking part in a religious ceremony in Tehran, state media reported.
The octogenarian leader was shown in a video broadcast by state television greeting people and being cheered at a mosque on Saturday as worshippers marked the anniversary of the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, an important date for Shia Muslims.
Khamenei, 86, can be seen on stage dressed in black as the crowd before him, fists in the air, chants, “The blood in our veins for our leader!”
State TV said the clip was filmed at central Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Mosque, named for the founder of the Islamic republic.
Khamenei, in power since 1989, spoke last week in a pre-recorded video, but had not been seen in public since before Israel initiated the conflict with a wave of surprise airstrikes on 13 June.
His last public appearance was two days before that, when he met members of parliament.
Israel’s bombing campaign followed a decades-long shadow war with Iran, and was aimed at preventing it from developing a nuclear weapon – an ambition Tehran has consistently denied.
The strikes killed more than 900 people in Iran, its judiciary has said, while retaliatory Iranian missile barrages aimed at Israeli cities killed at least 28 people there, according to official figures.
After the US attacked three nuclear facilities as part of the Iran-Israel war, Donald Trump claimed the strikes had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
But last week the UN nuclear watchdog chief said Iran could produce enriched uranium “in a matter of months”.
Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told the US broadcaster CBS News the strikes on three Iranian sites had clearly caused severe but “not total” damage.
He said: “Frankly speaking, one cannot claim that everything has disappeared and there is nothing there.
“They [Iran] can have, you know, in a matter of months, I would say, a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium, or less than that … Iran has the capacities there: industrial and technological capacities.”
His view was echoed in a preliminary US intelligence assessment that found that the bombings set back Iran’s nuclear programme by just a matter of months. Speaking to Reuters, one source estimated that the programme could be restarted in one to two months.
With Agence France-Presse
