Thousands of people rallied in Tehran, Baghdad and Beirut on Friday after weekly prayers to protest Israel’s strikes on Iran, chanting slogans against Israel and its main backer, the United States.

Images on Iran’s state television showed protesters in Tehran holding up pictures of commanders killed since the start of the war last week. Other protesters waved the flags of Iran and its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah. Protesters could be heard chanting “death to America” and “death to Israel” in footage from the protests.

“This is the Friday of the Iranian nation’s solidarity and resistance across the country,” the news anchor said.

“I will sacrifice my life for my leader,” read a protester’s banner, referring to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

According to state television, protests took place in other cities around the country, including in Tabriz in northwestern Iran and Shiraz in the south.

Last Friday, the IDF launched a sweeping assault on Iran’s top military leaders, nuclear scientists, uranium enrichment sites, and ballistic missile program. Israel says the operation is necessary to prevent the Islamic Republic from realizing its avowed plan to destroy the Jewish state.

Mohammad Javad Haj Ali Akbari, the Imam leading Tehran’s prayers, told worshippers that Israel had attacked Iran out of “despair,” the official IRNA news agency reported.

He accused Israel of launching a “psychological war” to “pit the people of the country against the government.”

“Their plans were precise, but their calculations were laughable,” the imam said.

Iran has retaliated to the IDF strikes by launching over 470 ballistic missiles and around 1,000 drones at Israel.

So far, Iran’s missile attacks have killed 24 people and wounded thousands in Israel, according to health officials and hospitals. Some of the missiles have hit apartment buildings, causing heavy damage.

With warnings of all-out regional war intensifying, fears are growing over an intervention by Iran-backed Iraqi factions, who have threatened Washington’s interests in the region if it were to join Israel in its war against Iran.

In Iraq, thousands of supporters of powerful cleric Moqtada al-Sadr rallied after Friday prayers in Baghdad and other cities, AFP correspondents said.

Sadr, who has previously criticized Tehran-backed Iraqi armed factions, retains a devoted following of millions among Iraq’s majority community of Shiite Muslims.

“No to Israel! No to America!” chanted demonstrators gathered in the Sadr City district of Baghdad, the cleric’s stronghold in the capital.

“It is an unjust war… Israel has no right” to hit Iran, said protester Abu Hussein.

“Israel is not in it for the [Iranian] nuclear [program]. What Israel and the Americans want is to dominate the Middle East,” added the 54-year-old taxi driver.

In the city of Kufa, protesters set fire to Israeli and American flags.

Iraq is both a significant ally of Iran and a strategic partner of the United States.

In Lebanon, hundreds of Hezbollah supporters took to the streets in the group’s stronghold in Beirut’s southern suburbs.

Men, women, and children waved the flags of Iran, Hezbollah, and Lebanon, with some holding pictures of Khamenei.

“It is my duty to stand with [Iran] against the Zionist Israeli enemy,” said Adnan Zaytoun, 60.

To supporters like Zaytoun, “if anyone attacks us, we will defend ourselves, but we do not support war.”

Hezbollah has not expressed any intention to intervene militarily on Iran’s side against Israel. The terror group emerged severely weakened from a nearly 15-month war it launched against Israel on October 8, 2023, a day after fellow Iran-backed group Hamas invaded Israel and sparked the war in Gaza.

“We are here to show the American and Israeli enemies that we are resilient and will not be defeated… even if they destroy our homes over our heads,” said Fadel Saad, an 18-year-old student.

In Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, and other areas, tens of thousands of people gathered for protests organized by the Houthi authorities, according to their official media outlets.

The Iran-backed rebels — whose banner includes the words “death to America, death to Israel, a curse on the Jews” — have launched ballistic missiles and drone attacks on Israel, and attacked Red Sea shipping, since November 2023, a month after the Hamas onslaught.