Iran’s supreme leader threatens Israel and the US with a “devastating response”

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran’s supreme leader on Saturday threatened Israel and the US with a “devastating response” to attacks on Iran and its allies.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that Iranian officials are increasingly threatening to strike another blow against Israel after the attack on the Islamic Republic on October 26c, which targeted military bases and other locations and killed at least five people.

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

“The enemies, whether it is the Zionist regime or the United States of America, will surely receive a devastating response for 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 specify the timing of the threat of attack, nor the scale. The U.S. military operates bases throughout the Middle East, and some troops are currently manning a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, battery in Israel.

The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier is likely in the Arabian Sea, and Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said Friday that more destroyers, fighter squadrons, tankers and B-52 long-range bombers would arrive in the region to deter Iran . and its militant allies.

Khamenei, 85, took a more cautious approach in his earlier remarks, saying officials would weigh Iran’s response and that Israel’s attack “should neither be exaggerated nor downplayed.” Iran launched two major direct attacks on Israel in April and October.

But Iran’s attempts to play down the Israeli attack failed as 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 a Revolutionary Guard base used to launch satellites.

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

However, Iran is dealing with its own problems at home, as its economy struggles under the weight of international sanctions and it faces years of large-scale, multiple protests. After Khamenei’s speech, the Iranian rial fell to 691,500 per dollar, near an all-time low. It was 32,000 rials to the dollar when Tehran signed a nuclear deal with world powers in 2015.

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 shortly before Khamenei’s comments were made public. In it, he warned that Iran’s response “will be wise, powerful and beyond the control of the enemy.”

“The leaders of the Zionist regime must watch from 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 during the October 26 attack.

On Saturday, Khamenei met with university students to mark Student Day, which commemorates the Nov. 4, 1978, incident in which Iranian soldiers opened fire on students protesting the Shah’s rule at Tehran University. The shooting killed and wounded several students and further heightened the tensions that gripped Iran at the time, eventually leading to the Shah’s flight from the country and the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The crowd cheered Khamenei wildly, chanting: “The blood in our veins is a gift to our leader!” Some also made a hand gesture — similar to the “time-out” signal given by slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in 2020 in a speech in which he threatened that American troops who arrived in the Middle East standing up would “return in coffins.” horizontally.

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

An attack in a central Israeli city early Saturday wounded 11 people as Iran’s supreme leader vowed a punitive response to last week’s Israeli attack.

In central Israel, a pre-dawn strike from Lebanon hit a building in the predominantly Israeli Arab city of Tira on Saturday, injuring 11 people, the Magen David Adom emergency service said.

The Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah said on Saturday it had used rockets and explosive-laden drones to target military and intelligence targets in northern and central Israel. It claimed responsibility for the rocket attack on the Israeli military base of Unit 8200 in Glilot on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, as well as for the rocket attack on military facilities in Zvulun. Thira is about 12 miles from Glilot. Hezbollah also said it had targeted Israel’s central Palmachim air base with explosive drones, saying they had “delivered precision strikes on the targets”.

The Israeli military did not confirm whether any of the three Hezbollah targets were hit and said it did not comment on the group’s claims.

Meanwhile, an Israeli airstrike on a southern suburb of Beirut on Saturday afternoon wounded 11 people, Lebanon’s health ministry said.

In another incident, the captain of a Lebanese ship was taken by a group of armed men who landed on the coast north of Beirut, Lebanese authorities said on Saturday. Officials said the incident happened in the early hours of Friday, and authorities are investigating whether Israel was involved.

Israel has not yet commented on this issue. In the past, Israel has conducted military operations deep into Lebanon to kidnap or kill Hezbollah and Palestinian officials.

In the Gaza Strip, Israel has also stepped up its offensive against remaining Hamas fighters, raising concerns about humanitarian conditions for civilians still there.

A series of Israeli strikes on Nuseirat, a refugee camp in central Gaza, killed at least 42 people, more than half of them women and children, in 24 hours, said Dr. Marwan Abu Nasser, director of Al-Awda Hospital, which hosted the hospital. injured, the Associated Press reported. According to him, another 150 were injured.

Israel’s war in Gaza has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians since October 7, 2023, when Hamas militants killed an estimated 1,200 people in Israel and took about 250 hostages back to Gaza. Health officials in Hamas-run Gaza do not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but say more than half of those killed in the enclave are women and children.

Gambrell writes for the Associated Press. AP reporters Adam Schreck in Jerusalem, Bassem Mroue in Beirut, Natalie Meltzer in Tel Aviv and Shlomo Mohr in Tire and the Times staff contributed to this report.