Pete Hegseth’s comments came a day after Khamenei vowed to keep fighting in his first statement since being named leader.
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US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has claimed that Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei was injured in a US and Israeli attack on Iran.
At a press conference at the Pentagon on Friday, Hegseth said Khamenei was “injured and probably disfigured.”
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“He released our statement yesterday, which was actually weak. But there was no audio, no video. It was a written statement,” Hegseth said.
The Pentagon chief has provided no evidence regarding his assessment of Khamenei, and Iran has not provided details about Khamenei’s condition. Iranian leaders also did not immediately respond to Hegseth’s claims.
Khamenei made his first public statement on Thursday since taking over as supreme leader following the assassination of his father Ali Khamenei on February 28, the first day of the US and Israeli attack on Iran.
In written remarks read out on Iranian state television, Khamenei said Iran would immediately close all US military bases in the region and attack unless it promised to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed.
The Iranian leader, who has not appeared in public since the start of the war, said: “I would like to thank our brave fighters who are doing a great job at a time when our country is under pressure and attack.”
US President Donald Trump said earlier this week that he was “not happy” with Khamenei’s appointment as Iran’s new supreme leader and suggested he could be targeted and killed like his father.
“I don’t know if it’s going to last. I think they made a mistake,” the US president said on Monday.
At least 1,444 people have been killed and 18,551 injured in U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran since the war began late last month, according to the latest figures from Iran’s Health Ministry.
The United States and Israel say they are targeting Iranian leaders as well as military and nuclear infrastructure, while Iran says thousands of civilian facilities, including schools and hospitals, have been attacked.
In a speech on Friday, Hegseth said that since February 28, U.S. and Israeli strikes have hit more than 15,000 targets in Iran.
“We are shooting down and destroying the missiles they still have in stock, but more importantly, we are preventing them from producing any more,” he said.
“Their production lines, their military factories, their defense innovation centers have been defeated. Iran’s leadership is in no more shape. It’s hiding in despair, going underground and hunkering down. That’s what rats do.”
Early Friday morning, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Iran’s top security official Ali Larijani took part in a large Al-Quds Day demonstration in the capital Tehran.
Mohammad El-Masry, a professor at the Doha Graduate Institute, said Mr. Hegseth’s remarks were primarily aimed at an American audience.
“Mr. Hegseth is clearly … trying to project confidence and success and trying to reassure the American people,” Elmasry told Al Jazeera, noting that recent polls show that a majority of Americans oppose a war with Iran.
“(The war) is very unpopular. People are seeing gas prices going up. Now Americans are being killed… so Mr. Hegseth and Mr. Trump are trying to project confidence.”
