Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei delivered a rare Friday sermon defending this week’s missile attack on Israel that deepened fears of a regional war, while praising the “logical and legal” Hamas-led October 7 attack that sparked the war in Gaza and fueled violence throughout the Middle East.
Speaking in front of tens of thousands at a mosque in the capital Tehran, Khamenei said Iran-backed armed groups in the Middle East “will not back down” even after Israel recently killed a spate of terrorist leaders.
In his first public Friday sermon in nearly five years, Khamenei spoke in Arabic to discuss fighting against Israel by the Iran-aligned “axis of resistance,” including Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Palestinian terror group Hamas.
“The resistance in the region will not back down with these martyrdoms, and will win,” Khamenei told the crowd at the Imam Khomeini Grand Mosalla mosque, where supporters carried portraits of slain Hezbollah and Hamas leaders.
He hailed the terror groups’ “fierce defense” against Israeli forces over the past year, referring to Hamas’s brutal October 7 onslaught against Israel and the subsequent solidarity attacks by Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthi rebels and militia groups in Iraq and Syria.
The Tehran-backed terrorists were engaged in “logical and legitimate” action against Israel, Khamenei claimed, and “no one has the right to criticize them.”
Khamenei spoke with a rifle by his side, a common tradition in Iran for Shiite Muslim imams leading Friday prayers, meant to signal preparedness to face an enemy.
The speech was preceded by a commemoration ceremony for Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah who was killed in an Israeli strike on southern Beirut on September 27 alongside Revolutionary Guards commander Abbas Nilforoushan.
Khamenei’s sermon took place days before the first anniversary of the October 7 terror atrocities, and after Iran this week had fired barrages of some 200 missiles at Israel in retaliation for the killings of Nasrallah, Nilforoushan as well as Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July.
“What our armed forces did was the minimum punishment for the crimes of the usurping Zionist regime,” said Khamenei of the missile fire, Iran’s second-ever direct attack on US-backed Israel.
The Iranian leader charged that Israel was a “malicious regime” which has “only kept itself standing by the injection of American support.”
It “will not last long,” he said.
“The Palestinians were right” to launch the unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, Khamenei stated, calling it “a logical and legal” action.
Iran has hailed the Hamas attack — the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust — but denied any involvement.
Tehran cut ties with Israel following the 1979 Islamic Revolution and has since made the Palestinian cause together with the Jewish state’s destruction a centerpiece of its foreign policy.
Khamenei last led Friday prayers in January 2020 after Iran fired missiles at a US army base in Iraq, in response to a strike that killed revered Revolutionary Guards commander Qassem Soleimani.
Hamas, Hezbollah and other armed groups in the Middle East, along with Syria’s Assad regime, are part of the Iran-aligned “axis of resistance” to Israel and its ally the United States.
In April, Tehran launched missiles and drones against Israel in retaliation for a deadly Israeli strike that killed a Revolutionary Guards commander at the Iranian consulate in Damascus.
In both attacks, nearly all missiles were intercepted by Israel or its allies.
Also Friday, the semi-official Iranian news agency SNN quoted Revolutionary Guards deputy commander Ali Fadavi as saying that if Israel attacks, following this week’s missile barrage, Tehran would target Israeli energy and gas installations.
“If the occupiers make such a mistake, we will target all their energy sources, installations and all refineries and gas fields,” Fadavi said.
Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi arrived in Beirut for a visit hours after intensive Israeli airstrikes that reportedly targeted Nasrallah’s presumed successor. Araqchi met with top Lebanese officials, including caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and speaker of parliament Nabih Berri – a Hezbollah ally.
Iran’s most senior diplomat also said his presence in Beirut “in these difficult circumstances” was the best evidence that Iran stood by Lebanon and supported the Shi’ites.
Araqchi said Tehran supported efforts for a ceasefire in Lebanon on the condition it would be backed by Hezbollah and simultaneous with a ceasefire in Gaza, where the US and other mediators have been unsuccessfully pushing for a hostage-truce agreement to end the fighting between Israel and Hamas.