Iran claims it can build nukes, threatens Israel and US with ‘tooth-breaking’ retaliation

Iran’s supreme leader has issued a stunning threat to the US and Israel after a top adviser warned the country can build nukes.

Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has threatened the US and Israel with a “tooth-breaking response” to Israel’s strike on Iranian military targets.

Iran’s supreme leader has claimed it could build nuclear weapons and threatened the US and Israel with a “tooth-breaking response” to Israel’s strike on Iranian military targets.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued the chilling statement while speaking with students ahead of the anniversary of the 1979 seizure of the US embassy in Tehran.

“The enemies, whether the Zionist regime or the United States of America, will definitely receive a tooth-breaking response to what they are doing to Iran and the Iranian nation and to the resistance front,” Khamenei, 85, said on Saturday in a video released by the state media, referring to Tehran-backed terror groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.

On Saturday, Israel again carried out deadly air strikes on north Gaza, where the UN calls conditions “apocalyptic”, and Hezbollah intensified rocket fire around Israel’s commercial hub of Tel Aviv.

The comments came a day after a top adviser made an unnerving claim about Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has threatened the US and Israel with a “tooth-breaking response” to Israel’s strike on Iranian military targets.

Israel’s military said it intercepted three drones over the Red Sea, after late Friday reporting seven drones launched from “several fronts”.

Kamal Kharrazi said on Friday the country could alter its policies on using nuclear weapons if the threat seems big enough.

“If an existential threat arises, Iran will modify its nuclear doctrine, we have the capability to build weapons and have no issue in this regard,” Kharrazi told Lebanese media, Fox News reported.

Just days before the presidential election in Israel’s main military supplier the US, Khamenei said Iran’s response would cover attacks on both the Islamic republic and its allies.

Israel’s military said it intercepted three drones over the Red Sea, after late Friday reporting seven drones launched from “several fronts”.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq – which is among pro-Iran groups drawn into more than a year of war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon – claimed responsibility for four drone strikes on Eilat.

Since late September Israel has been engaged in full-scale war against Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon while fighting continues against the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which triggered the Gaza war by attacking Israel on October 7 last year.

On October 26, Israel bombed military sites in Iran, killing four servicemen, in response to an October 1 barrage of about 200 missiles that Tehran called a reprisal.

Israel has warned Iran against responding to the October 26 attack.

B-52 bombers

Analysts say Israel inflicted severe damage on Iranian air defences and missile capacities and could yet launch more wide-scale action against the Islamic republic.

Yemen’s Iran-backed Huthi rebels, who have repeatedly attacked commercial shipping in the Red Sea, are transforming themselves into a “powerful military organisation” due to “unprecedented” military support from outside sources, particularly Iran and Hezbollah, a UN report said.

Ahead of the US election on Tuesday, American officials have been pushing for a resolution of the Lebanon war.

On Friday, the Pentagon announced deployment of ballistic missile defence destroyers, long-range B-52 bombers and other resources to the Middle East, serving as a warning to Iran.

The capabilities would begin arriving “in coming months”, a Pentagon spokesman said.

US naval forces and heavy B-2 bombers have struck Huthi rebel targets in Yemen in response to the attacks by the rebels.

Since October 6, Israeli forces have carried out a major air and ground assault in north Gaza, centred on the Jabalia area, vowing to stop Hamas from regrouping.

“The situation unfolding in north Gaza is apocalyptic,” said a joint statement by UN agency chiefs. They described the area as “under siege” and “denied basic aid and lifesaving supplies”.

In the Gaza City area, medics administered polio vaccines to children after the World Health Organisation said the necessary second round would begin in the territory’s north on Saturday. Israeli bombing had halted the drive.

Witnesses said Israeli warplanes twice hit Beit Lahia, adjacent to Jabalia, overnight.

Deaths in Gaza

Israel’s military said dozens of militants were killed around Jabalia “in aerial and ground activity”.

Troops were also operating in central Gaza and in Rafah in the south, it added. Medics and Gaza’s civil defence agency reported three people killed in a strike on Nuseirat, in central Gaza.

“At 1:00am, there was an explosion and the screaming started. We came out and there were planes and gunfire above us,” said Ashraf Abdullah, describing the victims as “all torn to pieces.” After nearly a year of tit-for-tat exchanges across Israel’s northern border, Israel escalated its bombing campaign against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon on September 23 and later sent in ground troops.

Hezbollah has since fired more deeply into Israel.

A strike in the coastal plain north of Tel Aviv wounded 19 people, four of them moderately, police said on Saturday, after the army reported three projectiles fired from Lebanon into central Israel.

Israel’s military says 37 soldiers have been killed in Lebanon since it began ground operations, and Israeli figures show at least 63 people have been killed on the Israeli side of the border over the past year.

Hezbollah said it had again launched rockets at Israel’s Glilot intelligence base near Tel Aviv, and also claimed rocket fire against “military industries” in the Haifa area.

AFP images from Tira, northeast of Tel Aviv, showed the upper wall blown out in what appeared to be a residential building. Several cars below were crushed.

Since the war escalated, Israeli strikes have killed at least 1,911 people in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally of health ministry figures.

Israeli strikes against Hezbollah’s south Beirut stronghold on Saturday killed one person and wounded 15, the health ministry said.

The war has displaced hundreds of thousands of people in Lebanon. “There’s no heating. We don’t have warm clothes,” said Fatima, 17, who now camps out with her family at a school near Deir al-Ahmar, in Lebanon’s eastern Baalbek area.

Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed 43,314 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry which the UN considers reliable.

Originally published as Iran claims it can build nukes, threatens Israel and US with ‘tooth-breaking’ retaliation