The Office of the Supreme Leader recently released a written statement saying that Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei considers Israel’s strategy to be shifting toward “promoting internal disunity” in Iran. Khamenei claims that the Israeli forces and their supporters have begun to exert efforts to erode the Iranian people’s resilience in recent days due to the military defeats. Due to the military defeats, Khamenei states that Israeli forces and their supporters have begun to make an effort to weaken the resilience of Iran’s people.

This psychological warfare is based on sowing fear, despair, doubt, and mistrust in society, it said. To counter this, Khamenei encouraged to the people to keep the unity of the nation and be on watch, specifically calling on the Government of Iran to take preemptive measures to build public confidence and refrain from any action that could lead to discontent among the nation.

Accusations of Territorial Expansion and Regional Threats

In his statement, the Supreme Leader harshly condemned the United States and the U.S. government, calling its actions against the Iranian people a “hybrid war. Khamenei said the “American system of domination” is the complete negation of a powerful and independent Iran, and on the eve of the founding of the State of Israel, which has been in existence for more than 80 years, it was set up to serve as a “garrison in the region.”

Moreover, Khamenei claimed that the USA is meaningfully supporting Israel to establish the “Greater Israel” borders. He cautioned of far-right Israeli movements trying to use force to extend their boundaries to the Euphrates, which borders Iran. He singled out Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” as an emblem of freedom for other countries, in contrast to such threats.

The Timing and Echoes of Past Warnings

This message coincided with two important occasions, the Shia holy day of Eid al-Ghadir on which it is believed that Prophet Muhammad named Ali as his successor, and the anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, followed by his successor, Mojtaba’s father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

This rhetoric mirrors that of Khamenei’s Eid al-Adha speech and Iran’s foreign ministry and his official social media accounts on May 26. In the previous statement, he threatened that Middle East countries would no longer be able to protect U.S. military bases and repeated a decade-old prophecy of his predecessor, predicting that Israel would “enter the final phase of its ‘cursed demise’ and would no longer exist in the next 15 years.