Iran’s supreme leader threatens Israel and the US with ‘a crushing response’ to the Israeli attack

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — 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 threaten another attack on Israel following the October 26 attack on the Islamic Republic, which targeted military bases and other locations and killed at least five people.

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

“The enemies, whether it is the Zionist regime or the United States of America, will certainly receive a crushing response to what they are doing to Iran, the Iranian nation and 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 or its scale. The US military operates at bases throughout the Middle East, with some troops now manning a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery (THAAD) in Israel.

The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln is likely 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 come to the region to deter Iran . and its militant allies.

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

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

Iran’s allies, dubbed the “Axis of the Resistance” by Tehran, have also been seriously injured by the continued Israeli attacks, especially the Lebanese Hezbollah and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Iran has long used these groups as both an asymmetric way to attack Israel and as a shield against a direct attack. Some analysts believe these groups want Iran to do more to support them militarily.

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

General Mohammad Ali Naini, a spokesman for Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard that controls the ballistic missiles needed to target Israel, gave an interview published by the semi-official Fars news agency just before Khamenei’s comments 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 must look out of their bedroom windows 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.

Khamenei met with university students on Saturday to mark Students’ Day, which commemorates a November 4, 1978 incident in which Iranian soldiers opened fire on students protesting against the Shah’s rule at the University of Tehran. The shooting killed and injured several students, and tensions over Iran at the time further escalated, eventually leading to the Shah fleeing 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 “time out” signal — given by slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in a 2020 speech in which he threatened that US troops arriving in the Middle East standing up would be “horizontally placed in coffins would return’.

Iran will mark the 45th anniversary of the US Embassy hostage crisis this Sunday, according to the Persian calendar. The storming of the embassy by Muslim students on November 4, 1979 sparked the 444-day crisis, deepening the decades-long enmity between Tehran and Washington that continues today.