Iran’s leader makes harshest threats yet, sending currency to new low; IRGC general says reprisal for Israeli attack that followed Iran’s missile barrage will be ‘wise, powerful’
Iran’s supreme leader on Saturday threatened Israel and the US with “a crushing response” over attacks on Iran and its allies.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke as Iranian officials are increasingly threatening to launch yet another strike against Israel after its October 26 attack on the Islamic Republic that targeted military bases and facilities and that Iran said killed at least five people.
Israel’s retaliatory strikes on Iranian military facilities came weeks after the October 1 attack, in which Iran launched 200 ballistic missiles at Israel, sending most of the population rushing to bomb shelters and safe rooms, causing relatively minor damage to military bases and some residential areas, and killing a Palestinian man in the West Bank.
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 operation of Lebanon, into a wider regional conflict just ahead of the US presidential election this Tuesday.
“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,” Khamenei said in video released by Iranian state media.
The supreme leader did not elaborate on the timing of the threatened attack, nor the scope. The US military operates throughout the Middle East, with some troops now manning a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, battery in Israel.