Three-minute read
On July 29, 2025, Ali Khamenei, the clerical regime’s Supreme Leader, stepped before the cameras in the Khomeini Hussainiya for the third time since the devastating 12-day war. He came not as a victor, but as a ruler scrambling to patch the ideological fractures of his regime with threadbare slogans. The carefully chosen words were aimed not at the world, but inward—toward a shaken, dispirited power apparatus that had just witnessed the loss of over 50 top military and nuclear personnel, and the deep damage to its defense infrastructure.
Khamenei opened with a declaration: “The Islamic Republic is founded on two major pillars: religion and knowledge.” He claimed the real issue the West has with Iran is not enrichment or human rights, but that “they oppose your faith and your knowledge… your widespread belief and national capabilities.” He insisted that “the pillars of the system have shown their unparalleled strength to the world.”
But this was not a speech of strength. It was a crisis manager’s dispatch to loyalists who had just suffered a strategic defeat—framed as triumph only through denial. Beneath the declarations of divine mission and scientific genius was a plea to salvage morale from the ashes of war, economic collapse, and growing unrest.
Khamenei’s Sudden Masquerade of Nationalism Seeks to Misdirect #Iran’s Outragehttps://t.co/tAIOMo0F09
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) July 25, 2025
In tone and content, this address mirrored a pattern the regime has followed for decades: reframe every setback as a test of ideological purity, every failure as the result of foreign plots. But no amount of slogan can cover the fact that, in truth, the regime’s only successful “enrichment” has come from its industry of repression—its laboratories of torture, its machine of executions, its monopoly on fear.
The boastful talk of a “knowledge-based economy” that once promised innovation and progress now lies buried under rolling blackouts, water crises, land subsidence, and the mass migration of the country’s educated youth. Over 100,000 Iranian students have fled abroad. Fewer than one percent return.
While Khamenei spoke of “taking great steps forward in deepening our scientific capabilities,” the reality is that Iran’s nuclear program—his crown jewel—has been brought to a halt. Abbas Araghchi, the regime’s Foreign Minister, has admitted that the infrastructure suffered “serious damage” and “has now been effectively stopped.” And yet, Khamenei doubled down: “We will not abandon knowledge and enrichment. We will elevate this nation to the pinnacle of glory—to the blindness of our enemies.”
#Khamenei Breaks Silence in Bid to Shore Up a Fractured Base After 12-Day Warhttps://t.co/DB9Rw7kNJn
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) July 17, 2025
These aren’t policies. They are incantations.
In a sense, the speech was not meant to persuade anyone outside the regime’s inner sanctum. Its true audience was the fractured security and military elite, whose morale has crumbled. By insisting that “the world felt the full strength of the Islamic Republic up close,” Khamenei was attempting to rewrite the outcome of a war the regime had neither anticipated nor controlled.
Yet this act of defiance only underscored its desperation. The contradiction between past promises and present failures is no longer theoretical. The regime that once claimed to be the vanguard of justice and self-reliance now depends on mass surveillance, systematic execution, and state-sponsored terror beyond its borders to retain the illusion of power.
Khamenei Orders Parliament to Fall in Line Amid Crises Facing #Iran’s Theocracyhttps://t.co/TzzdhXnSdc
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) June 12, 2025
More than ever, the clerical regime is isolated—not only from the world but from the Iranian people. The streets have made that clear. The slogans from the Resistance Units painted on Tehran’s walls, the strikes across cities, the rising chants for regime change—all signal that the real power in Iran is shifting. It no longer lies in missiles or sermons, but in the hearts of a people who have endured everything—and are preparing for more.
Khamenei’s performance on July 29 was the portrait of a regime that has outlived its promises and now clings only to myth. The myth of scientific supremacy. The myth of divine authority. The myth of invulnerability.