A senior advisor to Iran’s supreme leader assessed that “militarily, today we are definitely in a better position than three years ago when Mr. Trump came to power… our influence in the region has increased despite all this [U.S.] pressure”. He also pledged that “we will never abandon our regional allies”, and went on to assert that “the U.S. thinks we are in a weak position and need to negotiate… The U.S. wants to negotiate with us to say ‘why do you have missiles, why are you present in the region and why do you have military capabilities?’ What kind of negotiations are these?”