Israel and US risk ‘crushing response’ over attacks, Iran’s supreme leader warns

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

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke as Iranian officials increasingly threatened to launch yet another strike against Israel after its October 26 on the Islamic Republic that targeted military bases and other locations, killing at least five people.

Any 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 head of the US presidential election this Tuesday.

Mr Khamenei said in a video released by Iranian state media: “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.”

The supreme leader did not elaborate on the timing of the attack, nor the scope.

The 85-year-old 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’s allies, called the Axis of Resistance by Tehran, have also been severely hurt by ongoing Israeli attacks, particularly Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

The two groups have long been used by Iran 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 its own problems at home as its economy struggles under the weight of international sanctions and it has faced years of widespread, multiple protests.

On Saturday, Mr Khamenei met with university students to mark Students Day, which commemorates an incident from November 4, 1978, 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 Mr Khamenei, chanting: “The blood in our veins is a gift to our leader!”

Some also made a hand gesture given by the slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in 2020 in a speech in which he threatened that American troops would “return in coffins”.