Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian bizarrely claimed on Friday that the entire political structure of Israel had “totally collapsed” in the aftermath of the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack.
Amir-Abdollahian made the comments during an ongoing visit to New York to meet with officials at the United Nations in an apparent attempt to guard Hamas from an Israeli response to protect its population.
Iran enthusiastically welcomed the Hamas terrorist attack when it occurred, throwing a street party to celebrate a death toll that has surged above 1,200 in an attack featuring the torture and mass killing of entire families, including infants, the disabled, and the elderly. Major General Hossein Salami, the head of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), again celebrated the mass murder as “the most unforgettable, stunning, and unprecedented defeat” of Israel, as well as of America and Britain.
Iranians attend a gathering in Tehran to express their solidarity with Palestinians after Hamas militants launched a deadly assault into Israel from the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023. (Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)
In the terrorist attack, which Hamas named the “al-Aqsa flood,” Hamas terrorists invaded Israel on land and with paragliders, raiding residential communities and going door-to-door on a killing spree. Israeli officials have confirmed the discovery of decapitated babies, children with knives left in their bodies, and a significant number of bodies charred to irrecognition. While the death toll officially stands at 1,200, authorities have warned that forensic analysis may prove that a much higher number died, as so many bodies were thoroughly destroyed.
In addition to the mass killings, Hamas took an estimated 250 hostages, which are believed to remain in Gaza.
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The terrorist attack was “completely legitimate based on the applicable rules of international law,” Amir-Abdollahian said on Thursday, according to the Iranian state outlet PressTV.
“The Zionist regime is committing genocide in Palestine. If the genocide in Gaza continues, the warmongers themselves will not be spared from this fire,” the foreign minister added, offering no evidence aside from alleged death tolls from Israeli military actions in Gaza compiled by Hamas entities. Hamas regularly positions its weapons and terror outposts near civilians to use them as human shields and often lies about what happens on the ground in Gaza.
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For example, Hamas claimed that an Israeli military strike targeted the al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza and killed 500 people. In reality, the fellow terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad hit the hospital with a misfired rocket, and European intelligence sources believe the death toll was closer to 50.
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Amir-Abdollahian’s support for the terrorist attack follows multiple similar statements from top Iranian officials. The “supreme leader” of the country, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, declared on October 17 that Hamas’s victims — including newborn children — were “not civilians.”
“Some officials in certain countries, who have spoken with our officials, have protested in defense of the Zionist occupiers as to why Palestinians have killed civilians,” Khamenei said. “Firstly, this statement is contrary to the truth. Those who live in [Israeli] settlements are not civilians. They are all armed.”
The president of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, declared any support for Israel in the face of Hamas’s brutality “Western racism and colonialism,” during a meeting with a representative from the Nigerien coup regime Wednesday.
Elsewhere in his New York media tour, Amir-Abdollahian recommended the United States “abandon” Israel, as the country allegedly no longer exists.
“We do encourage the US to abandon its absolute total support of the Israeli regime. According to information we have inside the region, both the security and political systems of Israel have totally collapsed,” the top diplomat told NPR, according to PressTV. “Right now, the only thing functional in Israel is their war machine that is also being run and controlled and managed by the US.”
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Amir-Abdollahian also took the opportunity to confirm Iran’s close relationship with Hamas, describing it as a “resistance movement legally fighting occupation” rather than a bloodthirsty terror gang.
“We do have our political support for the liberation movement so that the occupied territories will be freed. Therefore, our support is only political,” he claimed. “They have enough missiles, rockets and drones and can easily get them from anywhere.”
A U.S. State Department report estimated in 2020 that Iran offers Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad $100 million a year in financial support. A spokesman for Hamas, Gilad Hamad, told the BBC on the day of the attack that Iran had offered “direct backing” for it.
Salami, the head of the IRGC terrorist organization, added to Iran’s vocal support for Hamas by celebrating the mass killings on October 7 yet again in remarks on Thursday.
“Their defeat in Operation Al-Aqsa Storm was one of the most unforgettable, stunning and unprecedented defeats that crumbled the US, the UK and Israel together,” the Iranian Tasnim News Agency quoted Salami as saying at a public appearance in Mashhad.
“The United States bears responsibility for today’s developments in Palestine as it has been trying for years to portray the occupying regime as an angel of democracy and create a (positive) image for them,” he continued. “In the Muslim world, the Zionists are like an unwanted foreign object that has been implanted in this region and start new bleedings every time and again.”
Editor’s Note: This story was updated to reflect a revised number on the death toll from the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel. The Israeli government estimate of 1,400 was revised to around 1,200, according to Reuters.