In reaction to attacks on Iran and its supporters, Iran’s supreme leader warned Israel and the United States on Saturday with “a crushing response.”
As Iranian leaders increasingly threaten to strike Israel again following its Oct. 26 attack on the Islamic Republic, which hit military sites and other locations and killed at least five people, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei addressed.
Just before Tuesday’s U.S. presidential election, any further strikes by either side might turn the already precarious Middle East—which is already on the verge of regional warfare due to Israel’s ground invasion of Lebanon and the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip—into a more significant regional confrontation.
In a video issued by Iranian state media, Khamenei declared, “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.”
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The supreme commander did not provide more details on the extent or date of the impending strike. The United States military has bases across the Middle East, and some of its soldiers are now stationed in Israel at a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, battery.
Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder stated Friday that additional warships, fighter squadrons, tankers, and B-52 long-range bombers will be arriving in the area to dissuade the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, which is most likely in the Arabian Sea.
In previous statements, the 85-year-old Khamenei had adopted a more cautious stance, stating that Israel’s strike “should not be exaggerated nor downplayed” and that officials would consider Iran’s reaction. In April and October, Iran conducted two significant direct assaults against Israel.
Iran’s attempts to minimize the Israeli strike, however, were unsuccessful when Associated Press satellite images revealed damage to military installations close to Tehran associated with the nation’s ballistic missile program and at a Revolutionary Guard site used for satellite launches.
The continuous Israeli assaults have also caused significant harm to Iran’s allies, whom Tehran refers to as the “Axis of Resistance,” especially Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Iran has long utilized those organizations as a deterrent against a frontal attack on Israel as well as an asymmetrical means of attack. According to some observers, such factions want Iran to support them militarily more.
However, Iran has been facing its domestic issues, including years of numerous, massive protests and an economy that is struggling due to international sanctions. The Iranian rial hit an all-time low of 691,500 versus the dollar following Khamenei’s statement. When Tehran signed its nuclear agreement with the United States in 2015, the exchange rate was 32,000 rials to the dollar.
The semi-official Fars news agency published an interview with Gen. Mohammad Ali Naini, a spokesperson for Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which is in charge of the ballistic missiles required to strike Israel, shortly before Khamenei’s statements were made public. Iran’s retaliation “will be wise, powerful, and beyond the enemy’s comprehension,” he threatened in the document.
He cautioned, “The Zionist regime’s leaders should guard their criminal pilots within their small territory and look out from the windows of their bedrooms.” The Oct. 26 strike seems to have involved the employment of air-launched ballistic missiles by Israeli Air Force pilots.
In honour of Students Day, which honours the Nov. 4, 1978, event at Tehran University where the Iranian military opened fire on students who were opposing the Shah’s reign, Khamenei met with university students on Saturday. In addition to killing and wounding some students, the shooting increased the tensions that were already plaguing Iran at the time, which ultimately resulted in the shah’s departure and the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
“The blood in our veins is a gift to our leader!” the crowd chanted as they gave Khamenei a boisterous greeting. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in 2020, made a hand motion that some compared to a “timeout” signal during a speech in which he vowed that American forces who landed in the Middle East standing up would “return in coffins” horizontally.
According to the Persian calendar, Iran will commemorate the 45th anniversary of the hostage situation at the U.S. Embassy on Sunday. The 444-day crisis, which was sparked by Islamist students storming the embassy on November 4, 1979, solidified the long-standing animosity between Tehran and Washington that still exists today.
