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Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei said Wednesday that anyone expecting a change in U.S. policy toward Iran, through partisan shifts in Washington or concessions, is "seriously mistaken," hours after U.S. President Donald Trump's Republicans lost control of Congress.
"Those who still harbour even the slightest hope that the behaviour of the hegemonic system might change through partisan or factional shifts, or who imagine that making concessions to the United States can dissuade it from hostility towards the Iranian nation, are seriously mistaken," Khamenei said in a written statement on his website.
The message marked Iran’s "National Day of Fighting Global Arrogance," the anniversary of the 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.
"The Great Satan’s wish is the unconditional surrender of the Iranian nation," Khamenei said in the statement.
"The slightest inclination toward surrender to the domineering enemy will squander the great capital achieved through the blood of martyrs and embolden the arrogant enemy for further excess and subsequent wars," he added.
Khamenei also warned that the Middle East war would become even wider if the United States resumed its attacks on Tehran.
He said Iran's "management" of the Strait of Hormuz and the destruction of U.S. bases in regional countries were a reaction to U.S. aggression but also "a primary jihad against arrogance on a regional scale, which, if aggressions are repeated, will take on much wider dimensions."
"The only way to reach absolute deterrence is continuing the ‘ever-stronger Iran’ strategy," he said, adding that U.S. power had suffered "an irreversible fall" in both military and soft power.
"If they target our commanders and leaders this time, they should expect their own commanders and leaders to be killed," Mohammad Moghadamfar, an adviser to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), commander-in-chief, said, according to Fars News Agency.
"Our responses will no longer be reciprocal or proportional. We will go beyond the point of attack and set their assets ablaze, regardless of time or place," he said.
Speaking in Bandar Abbas, he warned that Gulf states such as the UAE and Bahrain would face a wider response if they hosted attacks on Iran.
"Trump was defeated both in war and in politics; we will certainly impose further defeats on him; this is still only the early outcome,” Iran’s judiciary chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei said on X.
Trump told the Financial Times on Tuesday that the U.S. had no immediate plans to strike Iran but was "locked and loaded."
Mojtaba Khamenei’s statement signals Tehran sees no change coming from Washington.
Tensions in the Middle East have remained high since the U.S. and Israel launched attacks against Iran on Feb. 28. Tehran retaliated by targeting Israel and U.S. assets in the region before a ceasefire agreement was reached in April.
Washington and Tehran signed a Memorandum of Understanding on freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz on June 18, but its implementation stalled because of disagreements over security in the waterway.
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