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Iran’s supreme leader has pledged to safeguard the nation’s nuclear and missile capabilities, in direct opposition to US President Donald Trump’s attempts to weaken them through airstrikes and negotiate a lasting peace agreement.
Delivering a bold statement via state television, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei declared that the only place for Americans in the Persian Gulf is “beneath its waters,” indicating a “new chapter” in the region’s unfolding history.
Khamenei has remained out of the public eye since he assumed the role of supreme leader after his father was killed during the initial airstrikes of the conflict.
His comments emerge amid a struggling Iranian economy, compounded by a US Navy blockade that is preventing Iranian oil tankers from accessing international waters.
The global economy is also feeling the strain, as Iran continues to maintain its control over the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial passageway for one-fifth of the world’s crude oil. On Thursday, Brent crude oil reached a peak price of $126 per barrel.
That shock to oil supplies and prices is putting pressure on Trump, who is floating a new plan to reopen the critical passageway used by the US’ Gulf allies to export their oil and gas.
Under the plan, the US would continue its blockade on Iranian ports, while coordinating with allies to impose higher costs on Iran’s attempts to subvert the free flow of energy, according to a senior administration official.
Trump is weighing multiple diplomatic and policy options to push Iran to end its chokehold, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to comment publicly.
The new proposal, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, is Trump’s latest effort to persuade other nations to help reopen the strait.
Khamenei signals strait will remain shut
In his remarks, Khamenei seemed to signal Iran would maintain its control over the waterway, which sits in the territorial waters of Iran and Oman. Iran had been charging some ships reportedly $2 million apiece to travel through the strait.
He said that Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz will make the Gulf more secure, and that Tehran’s “legal rules and new management” of the strait will benefit all the region’s nations.
However, the world considered the strait an international waterway, open to all without paying tolls.
Gulf Arab nations, chief among them the United Arab Emirates, have decried Iran’s control of the strait as akin to piracy.
Ceasefire shaken
The US blockade is designed to prevent Iran from selling its oil, depriving it of crucial revenue while also potentially creating a situation where Tehran has to shut off production because it has nowhere to store oil.
A recent Iranian proposal would push negotiations on the country’s nuclear program to a later date.
Trump said one of the major reasons he went to war was to deny Iran the ability to develop nuclear weapons. Iran has long maintained its program is peaceful, though it enriched uranium at near-weapons-grade levels of 60 per cent.
On Thursday, Pakistan said it was still facilitating indirect talks between the US and Iran aimed at easing tensions, but Islamabad would also welcome direct communication between the two sides, even by phone.
“If the two parties can engage in real-time conversations, that could ease the sticking points,” said Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Tahir Andrabi at a weekly news briefing. He declined to share details of any Iranian or US proposals.
Speaking to mark Persian Gulf Day in Iran, Khamenei’s remarks signaled that nuclear issues and Iran’s ballistic missile program wouldn’t be traded away.
“Ninety million proud and honourable Iranians inside and outside the country regard all of Iran’s identity-based, spiritual, human, scientific, industrial and technological capacities — from nanotechnology and biotechnology to nuclear and missile capabilities — as national assets, and will protect them just as they protect the country’s waters, land and airspace,” Khamenei said.
Khamenei referred to America as the “Great Satan,” a long hurled insult by Iranian leaders toward the US since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. He said Americans should have no business in the Persian Gulf.
“Foreigners who come from thousands of kilometres away to act with greed and malice there have no place in it — except at the bottom of its waters,” said Khamenei, who was reportedly wounded in the 28 February attack that killed his father, the 86-year-old former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
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