Iranian Judiciary Chief says Iran is more determined than ever and will neither retreat nor surrender, adding that Iranians will witness the downfall of the US and Israel, Al Mayadeen reports

Rhetoric of this kind from Iranian judicial and security officials is a recurring feature of escalation cycles with the US and Israel, and on previous occasions it has tended to be a continuation signal rather than a new catalyst: defiant official language has historically been the baseline state between kinetic episodes, not the trigger for them. The transmission channel that matters is energy, specifically the risk premium embedded in crude for any disruption to Gulf supply or shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, with freight and insurance costs the usual early tells before any physical interruption. Comments attributed to a judiciary chief rather than the supreme leader, the IRGC, or the foreign ministry carry less weight, since the authoritative signals in this system have tended to come from those channels; remarks relayed via a sympathetic regional outlet also sit toward the lower end of source reliability. The distinction worth drawing is between rhetoric and posture: redeployments, proxy activity, nuclear programme steps, or shipping incidents are what have historically repriced crude, gold, and the dollar as haven, while words alone have faded within sessions. Worth watching is whether the language is echoed or escalated by more senior figures and whether it coincides with any operational developments, since paired signals have mattered where standalone statements have not.