Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Wednesday that the country’s armed forces have increased their state of readiness by around 40 percent compared with the 12-day conflict with Israel in June.

Brigadier General Ali Mohammad Naeini, the spokesman for the Guards, said in a speech marking “Basij Week” that the outbreak of the conflict on June 13 “initially caused a major shock,” but that a message from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei stating that “the Zionist regime has made a mistake and will regret it” helped transform that shock into what he described as “national confidence.”

Naeini likened Khamenei’s remarks to those of the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in the early days of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, when Khomeini said: “A thief came and attacked.”