Khamenei responds to Gallant’s open letter, calling it a ‘full-scale psychological operation’
The statement described the letter as “a conflict whose primary battlefield is not border zones, but public perception and the realm of awareness.”
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s office responded to an open lettersent by former defense minister Yoav Gallant to Iran’s leader on Tuesday, calling it a “full-scale psychological operation” and propaganda, Iran International reported.
The response from Khamenei’s office dismissed Gallant’s statements of the Israeli military’s prowess and superiority in intelligence.
The statement described the letter as “a conflict whose primary battlefield is not border zones, but public perception and the realm of awareness.”
“What unfolded in June 2025 was not merely a military campaign. It was the strategic collapse of a system you spent four decades constructing,” Gallant wrote about Operation Rising Lion.
“As defense minister, I was responsible for turning decades of Israeli intelligence, air force capabilities, and strategic doctrine into a single, coordinated military plan. The plan that cut through your ‘Ring of Fire’ like a hot knife through butter and ultimately caused it to collapse,” he said.
Yoav Gallant speaks at Reichman University on February 25, 2025. (credit: ALON GILBOA)
According to Gallant, the plans he created as defense minister culminated inOperation Rising Lion.
In Gallant’s words, what mattered more than the physical damage dealt was the intelligence Israel gained. “We see everything. We hear everything. We are everywhere,” he wrote.
“We knew your schedules. Your sites. Your communications. Your conversations with your closest allies, most of whom are no longer with you, in Beirut, Damascus, andTehran. Your timelines. Your fallback plans. And your blind spots. In more ways than one, we knew more about you than you knew about yourselves.”
