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Ali Khamenei, the leader of Iran’s clerical dictatorship, has again tried to shift the argument over Iran away from uranium and inspections and toward ideology, telling his demoralized base that Western leaders are enraged not by the nuclear file but by Tehran’s project to build a new “Islamic” order at home and abroad.
In a message published on Khamenei’s website for what was termed the 59th annual meeting of the Union of Islamic Associations of Students in Europe, Khamenei wrote: “It is not about the nuclear issue and things like that.” Instead, he said, the dispute is “confronting the unjust order and the coercive dominance system in today’s world, and turning toward a just national and international Islamic system.” The framing recasts sanctions, isolation, and pressure as the cost of an historic mission rather than the consequence of choices that have imposed heavy burdens on citizens.
Khamenei’s absurd victory message came in the shadow of the 12-day war—an episode very costly for the regime, including the loss of senior commanders and severe damage to nuclear, military, and security infrastructure. The regime’s supreme leader did not engage those vulnerabilities directly. Instead, he attempted to rewrite the scoreboard: if the conflict is “not” about the nuclear file, then nuclear setbacks and battlefield losses can be reframed as spiritual tests; if it is about “world order,” then endurance itself becomes the definition of success.
Khamenei’s Insistence on A “Propaganda War” Exposes That His Battlefield Is Inside #Iranhttps://t.co/oTw7vPHbfP
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) December 12, 2025
That pivot points to what Khamenei’s messaging appears designed to contain: not simply the risk of renewed foreign strikes, but the deeper threat of internal rupture and a nationwide uprising. His closing promise— “complete victory awaits you, God willing”—reads as reassurance aimed at an increasingly disheartened loyalist base that has watched senior figures killed, core capabilities damaged, and public anger deepen amid worsening economic strain. In this telling, victory is not something proven by outcomes; it is asserted to prevent doubt from spreading through the regime’s own apparatus.
Khamenei chose his audience accordingly. “You students, especially outside the country, have a share of this great duty,” he wrote, urging them to identify their “capabilities” and steer their associations toward the regime’s project. In practical terms, the message assigns a communications mission: defend the clerical dictatorship’s narrative inside Western societies, and counter portrayals of Tehran as weakened, isolated, and dependent on repression. It is also an implicit acknowledgement that the regime views narrative control as strategic—especially when material weakness is harder to hide.
His insistence that the dispute is “not” nuclear also sits uneasily alongside the regime’s own recent claims about why it came under attack. The regime has repeatedly blamed International Atomic Energy Agency reporting for contributing to the attacks on its nuclear sites. It also notes that the IAEA’s Board of Governors passed a June 12 resolution criticizing Tehran’s accumulation of high-enriched uranium and its restriction of inspector access, and calling for the regime to resume cooperation. Those nuclear compliance disputes—central to the international case against Tehran—were precisely what Khamenei waved away as secondary.
Khamenei Retreats to Televised Message as Regime Faces Deepening Rifts and Denials Over U.S. Overtureshttps://t.co/dSz1tDr3R3
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) November 28, 2025
Khamenei’s message also landed amid global condemnations and confirmation that Tehran’s regional networks fuel instability as international agencies and media continue to warn that the regime’s proxies have remained major drivers of Middle East volatility.
Taken together, Khamenei’s message reads as a morale operation: insist the regime is advancing, not cornered; treat losses as “martyrdom,” not defeat; and define the decisive battlefield as belief. The political logic is to suppress doubt—above all, doubt inside Iran that the clerical dictatorship can endure the weight of war setbacks, nuclear vulnerability, crisis-driven economic stress, and a society whose anger is increasingly difficult to intimidate into silence.