Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei on Saturday vowed revenge for the US-Israeli killing of his father and predecessor, hours after President Donald Trump warned against any attempt to assassinate him.
Both sides dialled up the rhetoric after exchanges of fire this week rocked an interim agreement aimed at ending their war, which broke out on February 28 with massive US-Israeli strikes.
Trump has declared their ceasefire over, while mediators have been trying to salvage diplomacy, with Iranian media reporting that a delegation from Qatar travelled to Iran on Friday.
“Vengeance is the will of our nation and must inevitably be carried out,” Mojtaba Khamenei wrote in his first message since his father Ali Khamenei’s funeral this week.
He became Iran’s supreme leader after his father was assassinated by US-Israeli strikes on the first day of the war. He has not been in public since before the war.
