Iran’s supreme leader threatens Israel and US with Israeli attack

Iran’s supreme leader on Saturday threatened Israel and the US with a “crushing response” to attacks on Iran and its allies.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke as Iranian officials increasingly threatened to launch another strike against Israel after its Oct. 26 attack on the Islamic Republic that targeted military bases and other locations and killed at least five people.

Any further attacks by either side could engulf the wider Middle East, already reeling from the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip and Israel’s ground invasion of Lebanon, into a wider regional conflict just ahead of the US presidential election from Tuesday.

“The enemies, whether it is 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 the resistance front,” Khamenei said in a video published by Iranian state media.

The supreme leader did not elaborate on the timing of the threatened attack, nor the scope. The US military operates bases 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 is likely in the Arabian Sea, while Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said Friday that more destroyers, fighter squadrons, tanks and long-range B-52 bombers would come in the region to deter Iran. and his militant allies.

Khamenei, 85, took a more cautious approach in earlier remarks, saying officials would weigh Iran’s response and that Israel’s attack “should not be exaggerated or downplayed.” Iran launched two major direct attacks on Israel in April and October.

But Iran’s efforts to downplay the Israeli attack faltered as satellite photos reviewed by The Associated Press showed damage to military bases near Tehran linked to the country’s ballistic missile program, as well as a Revolutionary Guard base used in satellite launches .

Iran’s allies, dubbed the “Axis of Resistance” by Tehran, have also been badly hurt by ongoing Israeli attacks, particularly Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Iran has long used these groups both as an asymmetrical way to attack Israel and as a shield against a direct attack. Some analysts believe that those groups want Iran to do more to support them militarily.

Iran, however, has faced its own problems domestically as its economy struggles under the weight of international sanctions and has faced years of widespread and multiple protests. After Khamenei’s speech, the Iranian rial fell to 691,500 against the dollar, near an all-time low. It was 32,000 rials to the dollar when Tehran struck the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

General 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 semi-official Fars news agency just before Khamenei’s remarks were released. In it, he warned that Iran’s response “will be wise, strong and beyond the understanding of the enemy.”

“The leaders of the Zionist regime should look out their bedroom windows and protect their criminal pilots in their little territory,” he warned. Israeli Air Force pilots appear to have used air-launched ballistic missiles in the October 26 attack.

Khamenei met with students on Saturday to mark Students’ Day, which commemorates an incident on November 4, 1978, in which Iranian soldiers opened fire on students protesting the shah’s rule at Tehran University. The shooting killed and injured several students and further intensified the tensions that were consuming Iran at the time, eventually leading to the Shah’s flight from the country and the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The crowd gave Khamenei a raucous welcome, 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 slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in 2020, in a speech in which he threatened that US troops arriving in the Middle East on their feet would “turn in the coffin” horizontally.

Iran will mark the 45th anniversary of the US Embassy hostage crisis on Sunday, according to the Persian calendar. The November 4, 1979, assault on the embassy by Islamist students led to the 444-day crisis that cemented the decades-long enmity between Tehran and Washington that persists today.