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Ayatollah Ali Khamenei delivered a rare sermon on Friday amidst escalating tensions in the Middle East and urged Muslim nations — from Afghanistan to Yemen — to join the ‘defence’ against Israel. The remarks came days after Iran launched nearly 200 missiles into the other country as part of a retaliatory attack.
“The operation of our armed forces a few nights ago was totally legal and legitimate…it is the minimum punishment for Israeli crimes. The resistance in the region will not back down with these martyrdoms…and will win,” he asserted.
Khamenei delivered his first sermon in nearly five years with a rifle by his side as thousands of worshippers carried portraits of slain leaders of the Iranian “axis of resistance” against Israel and the United States.
The Supreme Leader of Iran also insisted on Friday that the US and its allies were preserving the security of Israel to make it an energy exporting gate from the region to the West. Khamenei told the crowd that Iran would not “procrastinate nor act hastily to carry out its duty” in confronting Israel, adding that the missile attack on Israel was “legal and legitimate.”
The speech was preceded by a commemoration ceremony Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah who was killed in an Israeli strike on southern Beirut on September 27 alongside Revolutionary Guards commander Abbas Nilforoushan. The killings had prompted a dramatic escalation of the conflict.
The Iranian leader charged that Israel was a “malicious regime” which has “only kept itself standing by the injection of American support”. He predicted that the other country “would not last long”.
Khamenei also lauded Hamas for launching the unprecedented October 7 attack against Israel and called it “a logical and legal” course of action. Tehran does not recognise Israel and has made support for the Palestinian cause a centrepiece of its foreign policy since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
(With inputs from agencies)
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