Iran's Supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei said on Friday (March 20, 2026) the country had dealt its enemies a "dizzying blow" in the war with the United States and Israel, as fresh blasts hit Tehran on the first day of the Persian New Year festival.
He released a message marking the start of Persian New Year which he named the year of a “resistance economy under national unity and national security.”
Iran-Israel war LIVE
Israel accused Tehran of an "attack on the holy sites" of Jerusalem, after a blast blew a crater in the Old CIty a few hundred metres from the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Western Wall and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Mr. Khamenei has not appeared in public since being named to succeed his father Ali Khamenei, who was killed in Israeli airstrikes at the start of the war that has engulfed the region, and has only issued written statements.
