Iran's supreme leader Ayatolah Ali Khamenei led prayers on Friday for the first time in 8 years in the capital Tehran, CBS news has reported.
The supreme leader took time to blast American officials as clowns as he mounted a robust defence of the Iranian forces.
Revisiting the night the Iranian Revolutionary Guards rained missiles on American bases in Iraq, the Ayatolah described the retaliatory action as the hand of God.
"What took place could not have been the work of any human actor, only the hand of God," Khamenei said as quoted by CNN. "The day in which the missiles of [Iran's Revolutionary Guards] rained down upon the American base, that was also the day of the Almighty."We saw history in the making. These are not normal days. The fact that a power, a nation, does possess the spiritual strengths in order to respond to the biggest bullying power in the world with such a slap in the face, this shows the divine hand, the hand of God", he added.
The public prayers come less than a month after Qassem Soleimani was killed in an American airstrike just outside the Baghdad Airport in Iraq.
Observers see the supreme leader's speech as an attempt to ease the tensions triggered by the downing of a Ukrainian airliner by an Iranian missile fired by the revolutionary guards.