Iran’s supreme leader insists country’s nuclear program operational after U.S. bomber strikes

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei insisted Monday that the U.S. airstrike on the country’s critical nuclear sites in June failed to cripple the Islamic Republic’s atomic capabilities.

Ayatollah Khamenei told a gathering of Iranian Olympic athletes that the country is in the midst of a “soft war,” in which the enemy tries to foment national anxiety by convincing people to lose hope in their own abilities.

“The U.S. President boasts that they’ve bombed and destroyed Iran’s nuclear industry. Very well, in your dreams,” the 86-year-old leader posted on X.

U.S. B-2 bombers and a submarine targeted three key Iranian nuclear sites — Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan — in Operation Midnight Hammer on June 22. President Trump quickly declared the airstrike an overwhelming success, saying it “completely and fully oblitered” Iran’s nuclear facilities and uranium enrichment capacity.

Later that day, Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said it was clear the sprawling Isfahan nuclear complex sustained “extensive additional damage” from the U.S. bombing. Mr. Grossi added that damage at Fordow and Natanz was still being assessed.

Iran launched with more than 1,500 ballistic missiles and suicide drone attacks during its June 13-25 conflict with Israel. Tehran struck civilian population centers, government sites and at least one hospital.

“Iranian missiles were able to penetrate into the depths of several of the Zionist regime’s important centers to destroy them. These missiles were built by young Iranians. We didn’t buy them from anywhere else,” Ayatollah Khamenei said. “The Zionists didn’t expect that a missile built by the hands of the Iranian youth could, with its flames and fire, reduce the depths of some of their sensitive research centers to ashes. But that’s what happened.”