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With fiery defiance and the weight of triumph in his voice, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei broke his silence in a televised address, declaring victory over Israel after a brutal 12-day war. Framing the ceasefire not as an end, but a strategic conquest, Khamenei boasted that Iran had “delivered a slap to America’s face,” accusing Washington of scrambling to intervene only to prevent what he called the total annihilation of the Zionist regime. In a moment thick with tension and defiance, he painted the U.S. not as a peacekeeper, but a panicked protector, stepping in to shield Israel from complete destruction.
