Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Threatens Israel, US With ‘Crushing Response’ Over Israeli Attack
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei waves to a crowd during a meeting with university students in Tehran on Saturday.
(Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader / AP)
LAGOS NOVEMBER 3RD (NEWSRANGERS)-Iran’s supreme leader on Saturday threatened Israel and the US with “a crushing response” over attacks on Iran and its allies.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke as Iranian officials are increasingly threatening to launch yet another strike against Israel after its October 26 attack on the Islamic Republic that targeted military bases and facilities and that Iran said killed at least five people.
Israel’s retaliatory strikes on Iranian military facilities came weeks after the October 1 attack, in which Iran launched 200 ballistic missiles at Israel, sending most of the population rushing to bomb shelters and safe rooms, causing relatively minor damage to military bases and some residential areas, and killing a Palestinian man in the West Bank.
Any further attacks from either side could engulf the wider Middle East, already teetering over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip and Israel’s ground operation of Lebanon, into a wider regional conflict just ahead of the US presidential election this Tuesday.
“The enemies, whether the Zionist regime or the United States of America, will definitely receive a crushing response to what they are doing to Iran and the Iranian nation and to the resistance front,” Khamenei said in video released by Iranian state media.
The supreme leader did not elaborate on the timing of the threatened attack, nor the scope. The US military operates throughout the Middle East, with some troops now manning a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, battery in Israel.
The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier likely is in the Arabian Sea, while Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said Friday that more destroyers, fighter squadrons, tankers and B-52 long-range bombers would be coming to the region to deter Iran and its terror allies.
The 85-year-old Khamenei had struck a more cautious approach in earlier remarks, saying officials would weigh Iran’s response and that Israel’s attack “should not be exaggerated nor downplayed.”
But efforts by Iran to downplay the attack faltered as satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press showed attacks damaged military bases near Tehran linked to the country’s ballistic missile program, as well as damage at a Revolutionary Guard base used in satellite launches.
Iran’s terror proxies, called the “Axis of Resistance” by Tehran, also have been severely hurt by ongoing Israeli attacks, particularly Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Iran has long used those groups as both an asymmetrical way to attack Israel and as a shield against a direct assault. Some analysts believe those groups want Iran to do more to back them militarily.
Israel launched a war on Hamas in Gaza after the October 7, 2023 massacre that killed some 1,200 people and took another 251 hostages. And it recently stepped up strikes on Hezbollah, which began launching rockets at Israel a day after the Hamas onslaught. Israel has vowed to push Hezbollah away from the border and allow tens of thousands of evacuees to return to their homes in northern Israel.
Iran, which directly attacked Israel with missiles and drones for the first time in April, has been dealing with its own problems at home, as its economy struggles under the weight of international sanctions and it has faced years of widespread, multiple protests. After Khamenei’s speech, the Iranian rial fell to 691,500 against the dollar, near an all-time low. It had been 32,000 rials to the dollar when Tehran reached its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
Gen. Mohammad Ali Naini, a spokesman for Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard which controls the ballistic missiles needed to target Israel, gave an interview published by the semiofficial Fars news agency just before Khamenei’s remarks were released. In it, he warned Iran’s response “will be wise, powerful and beyond the enemy’s comprehension.”
“The leaders of the Zionist regime should look out from the windows of their bedrooms and protect their criminal pilots within their small territory,” he warned. Israeli air force pilots appear to have used air-launched ballistic missiles in the October 26 attack.
Iran has long threatened Israel with destruction and called to wipe out the Jewish State.
Khamenei on Saturday met with university students to mark Students Day, which commemorates a November 4, 1978, incident in which Iranian soldiers opened fire on students protesting the rule of the shah at Tehran University. The shooting killed and wounded several students and further escalated the tensions consuming Iran at the time that eventually led to the shah fleeing the country and the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The crowd offered a raucous welcome to Khamenei, chanting: “The blood in our veins is a gift to our leader!” Some also made a hand gesture — similar to a “timeout” signal — given by the slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in 2020 in a speech in which he threatened that American troops who arrived in the Mideast standing up would “return in coffins” horizontally.
Iran will mark the 45th anniversary of the US Embassy hostage crisis this Sunday, following the Persian calendar. The November 4, 1979, storming of the embassy by Islamist students led to the 444-day crisis, which cemented the decades-long enmity between Tehran and Washington that persists today.
AP
For media advert placement, events coverage, media consultancy, placement of publications and further inquiries please WhatsApp 2348023773039 or email: labakevwe@yahoo.com
Short URL: https://newsrangers.com/?p=129392
Posted by News Rangers
on Nov 3 2024. Filed under International, National.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0.
You can leave a response or trackback to this entry
