Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appeared in public on Friday for the first time since Iran’s missile attack on Israel, describing it as legitimate punishment for what he called Israeli crimes and calling for more anti-Israel struggle.
Delivering his first Friday prayers sermon in nearly five years, Khamenei said Israel’s adversaries in the region should “double your efforts and capabilities… and resist the aggressive enemy”.
The deputy commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the country’s most powerful military force, said meanwhile that Iran would strike Israeli energy and gas installations if Israel attacked it.
“If the occupiers make such a mistake, we will target all their energy sources, installations, and all refineries and gas fields,” the semi-official Iranian news agency SNN quoted Ali Fadavi as saying.
Iran launched a barrage of missiles against Israel on Tuesday in what it said was retaliation for the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut on Sept 27, and the assassination of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July.
Iran blames Israel for Haniyeh’s killing. Israeli officials have not claimed responsibility.
Speaking alternately in Arabic and Persian, Khamenei eulogized Nasrallah, Iran’s top paramilitary ally in the region, and said the focus of the U.S. and its allies was to preserve the security of Israel as a cover for seizing the region’s resources.
