Iran’s supreme leader says Israel, US will receive ‘crushing response’ after Israeli attack

CAIRO – 2 November 2024: Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a stern warning to Israel and the United States, threatening them with "a crushing response" in light of recent attacks on Iranian territories.

The Iranian-Israeli tensions exacerbated after 1 October when Iran attacked Israeli lands with around 200 ballistic missiles, constituting Tehran’s most substantial direct assault on its long-standing adversary and the second such attack since the Gaza war started on October 7 last year.

Tehran's offensive was a retaliatory measure after Israel's assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July as well as Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Abbas Nilforoushan, a commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, in Lebanon in September.

On 26 October, Israel launched three waves of pre-dawn strikes against military targets in Iran in retaliation. The Iranian army announced the death of two soldiers as a result of the attack, noting that the strikes targeted military centers in Tehran, Khuzestan and Ilam.

World leaders have repeatedly warned about the looming threat of an all-out war as tensions escalate dramatically in the region, with Iran and Israel trading fire and issuing vows of retaliation against each other.

This latest escalation compounds an already volatile regional landscape, marked by the prolonged Israeli war in Gaza, now in its second year, and Israeli airstrikes and ground offensives in Lebanon over the past weeks.

Tragically, both conflicts have killed tens of thousands of civilian lives.

In a video released by Iranian state media, Khamenei declared, “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.”

However, the supreme leader did not provide specifics regarding the timing or the extent of the anticipated retaliatory action.

Meanwhile, the US is intensifying its presence in the Middle East amid potential Iranian retaliation with the Pentagon announcing on Friday that the US is dispatching bomber aircraft, fighter jets and more Navy warships to the region.