Iran’s supreme leader on Saturday threatened Israel and the United States with a “crushing response” to attacks against Iran and its allies.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke as Iranian officials increasingly threaten to launch a new strike against Israel following its Oct. 26 attack on the Islamic republic that targeted military bases and other sites and killed at least five people.
Any further attack from either side could engulf the wider Middle East, already reeling from the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Israel’s ground invasion of Lebanon, in a wider regional conflict just before the US presidential election this Tuesday.
“The enemies, whether it is 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 the resistance front,” Ali warned Khamenei in a video released by Iranian state media.
The supreme leader did not specify the timing of the attack or its scale.
The U.S. military operates on bases throughout the Middle East, with troops currently manning a high-altitude missile defense system, or THAAD, in Israel.
The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln is likely in the Arabian Sea, while Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said Friday that more destroyers, fighter squadrons, tankers and long-range B-52 bombers would arrive in the region to deter Iran and its allies. Early Sunday, U.S. Army Central Command said B-52s from the 5th Bombardment Wing at Minot Air Force Base had arrived in the Middle East, without providing further details.
Ali Khamenei, 85, had taken a more cautious approach. In earlier remarks, he said officials would evaluate Iran’s response and that Israel’s attack “should not be exaggerated or downplayed.” Iran launched two major direct attacks against Israel, in April and October.
But Iran’s efforts 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 base Revolutionary Guards used for satellite launches.
Iran’s allies, called the “Axis of Resistance” by Tehran, have also been severely affected by ongoing Israeli attacks, particularly Lebanese Hezbollah and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Iran has long used these groups both as an asymmetric means of attacking Israel and as a shield against 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 the country faces years of widespread and multiple protests. After the Ayatollah’s speech, the Iranian rial fell to 691,500 per US$1, near an all-time low. The US dollar was worth 32,000 rials when Tehran reached its nuclear deal with world powers in 2015.
General Mohammad Ali Naini, spokesman for Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, which controls the ballistic missiles needed to target Israel, gave an interview published by the semi-official Fars news agency just before Mr. Khamenei. He warned that Iran’s response “will be wise, powerful and beyond the comprehension of the enemy.” “The leaders of the Zionist regime should look out of their bedroom windows and protect their criminal pilots in their small territory,” he warned. Israeli Air Force pilots appear to have used air-launched ballistic missiles in the October 26 attack.
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 Islamist students on November 4, 1979 led to the 444-day crisis, which cemented the decades-long enmity between Tehran and Washington that persists today.
