Tehran cut ties with Israel following the 1979 Islamic Revolution and has since made destruction of Israel and the championing of the Palestinian cause a centerpiece of its foreign policy.
Ali Khamenei, Iran's second supreme leader, longest serving since August 6, 1989 stated in 2000 that “the cancerous tumor called Israel must be uprooted from the region”, and in 2001 that “the perpetual subject of Iran is the elimination of Israel from the region”.
From: The Times of Israel October 5, 2024 The Iranian leader, in his first public Friday sermon, in nearly five years, charged that Israel was a “malicious regime” which has “only kept itself standing by the injection of American support.” It “will not last long,” he said.
Khamenei says, 1. Iran ‘won’t back down 2. Israel won’t last long’ 3. hailed and praised the “logical and legal” Hamas-led October 7 invasion and massacre in southern Israel 4. Israel will ‘never defeat Hamas and Hezbollah’ 5. missile attack ‘minimum punishment for Zionist crimes’
“The resistance in the region will not back down with these martyrdoms, and will win,” Khamenei told the crowd at the Imam Khomeini Grand Mosalla mosque, where supporters carried portraits of slain Hezbollah and Hamas leaders.
He hailed the terror groups’ “fierce defense” against Israeli forces over the past year, referring to Hamas’s brutal October 7 onslaught against Israel and the subsequent solidarity attacks by Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthi rebels and militia groups in Iraq and Syria.
The Tehran-backed terrorists were engaged in “logical and legitimate” action against Israel, Khamenei claimed, and “no one has the right to criticize them.”
He urged nations from “Afghanistan to Yemen and from Iran to Gaza and Yemen” to be ready to take action against the enemy, and praised those who had died doing so.
He claimed Tuesday’s missile barrage, which sent most of Israel’s populace into bomb shelters and killed a Palestinian man in the West Bank, was based on international law, Iranian law and Islamic beliefs -- extremely worrying and frightening he is a religious leader preaching antisemitism, terrorism, hatred of an entire race, annihilation of an entire nation, in a place of worship too -- beggars belief
