Iran’s supreme leader threatens Israel, US with ‘crushing response’ over attacks

Dubai: Iran’s supreme leader has threatened Israel and the US with “a crushing response” over attacks on Iran and its allies.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke as Iranian officials increase threats to launch yet another strike against Israel after the latter’s October 26 attack on the Islamic Republic that targeted military bases and other locations and killed at least five people.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran last week.Credit: AP

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 invasion of Lebanon, into a wider regional conflict just before the US presidential election on Tuesday (Wednesday AEDT).

“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 a 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 on bases throughout the Middle East, with some troops manning a Terminal High Altitude Area Defence, or THAAD, battery in Israel.

The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier is in the Arabian Sea, while Pentagon press secretary Major General Pat Ryder said on Saturday that more destroyers, fighter squadrons, tankers and B-52 long-range bombers would be deployed to deter Iran and its militant 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”. Iran has launched two major direct attacks on Israel, in April and October.

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

Iran’s allies, called the “Axis of Resistance” by Tehran, also have been severely hurt by ongoing Israeli attacks, particularly on 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.

Iran, however, has been dealing with problems at home as its economy struggles under the weight of international sanctions and 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.

A photo from Planet Labs shows damaged buildings at Iran’s Khojir military base outside Tehran.Credit: AP

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 the interview, 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,” Naini warned. Israeli air force pilots appear to have used air-launched ballistic missiles in the October 26 attack.

Khamenei on Saturday met with university students to mark Students Day, which commemorates 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 late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in a 2020 speech in which he threatened that American troops who arrived in the Middle East would “return in coffins”. Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike in September.

Iran will mark the 45th anniversary of the US embassy hostage crisis on Sunday, following the Persian calendar. The November 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

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