A senior member of the Iranian Islamist regime praised the Shiite terrorist organization Hezbollah’s “creativity and flexibility” while the country’s foreign ministry condemned Israel for attacking Hamas on Sunday and Monday, backing Tehran’s terror proxy as Israeli authorities warn Lebanese to flee Hezbollah-controlled areas of their country.
Iran, the world’s premier state sponsor of terrorism, is one of Hezbollah’s most important financial backers and has cheered as the Lebanon-based terrorist group has waged war on northern Israel for months, displacing over 60,000 people.
While Hezbollah has always opposed the existence of Israel and threatened to attack civilians in the country, the terrorists dramatically escalated their belligerence in the aftermath of fellow Iran terror proxy Hamas invading Israel in October 2023, staging an unprecedented slaughter that left approximately 1,200 people dead and resulted in dozens of abductions. At press time, Israeli authorities believe 101 civilians remain in Hamas captivity in Gaza.
Graphic Content Warning: Home Where Hamas Murdered an Israeli Family in Kibbutz Be’eri
Joel B. Pollak / Breitbart NewsIsrael added the return of those displaced by Hezbollah to northern Israel to its official list of goals in the war against Hamas last week. A mysterious wave of detonations of electrical devices – first, pagers Hezbollah terrorists used to avoid Israeli espionage, followed by walkie-talkies, solar panels, laptops, and cell phones – also hit the terrorist group last week, shocking Lebanon but resulting in significant harm to Hezbollah’s top leaders. Notably, Mojtaba Amani, Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, was also injured in the attacks, indicating he possessed a Hezbollah pager.
The Israeli military began warning civilians to evacuate Hezbollah-controlled areas of Lebanon this week. On Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu published a video message to the Lebanese clarifying Israel harbors no ill will against them.
“For too long, Hezbollah has been using you as human shields. It placed rockets in your living rooms and missiles in your garage. Those rockets and missiles are aimed directly at our cities, directly at our citizens,” Netanyahu said. “To defend our people against Hezbollah strikes, we must take out those weapons. Starting this morning, the IDF has warned you to get out of harm’s way. I urge you – take this warning seriously.”
No group or entity, including the Israeli government, has taken responsibility for the electronics explosions, though the Lebanese government, Hezbollah, and others have accused Jerusalem of orchestrating the attack. Hezbollah has vowed to increase its attacks on Israel in retaliation.
Addressing Hezbollah’s growing attacks on Israel, Major General Mohsen Rezaei, a former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander currently serving on the advisory Iranian Expediency Council, predicted the terrorists were “on the verge of a great victory.”
“This victory will be very important and great because West Asia will be liberated from the clutches of Western powers,” Rezaei said on Sunday, according to the Iranian state propaganda outlet PressTV.
“Hezbollah is a man of innovation, creativity and flexibility and the depth of its manpower will not be exhausted for the next hundred years,” he celebrated. Rezaei reportedly also commented, PressTV shared, that “Iran has never wanted a war, but when its enemies assassinate the country’s guest in the capital Tehran, the Islamic Republic should definitely respond.”
The latter comment appears to be a reference to the death of Ismail Haniyeh, the “political” chief of Hamas, during a visit to Tehran in July to attend the inauguration of President Masoud Pezeshkian. Iran has repeatedly hinted at a massive attack on Israel to avenge Haniyeh, a longtime ally of the Iranian regime, but has yet to act at press time. Rezaei’s addressing the Haniyeh assassination alongside the Hezbollah campaign suggests that Iran views Hezbollah’s actions as an extension of its own campaign against Israel, however.
Separately, on Monday, the Iranian Foreign Ministry condemned Israel for organizing military responses to Hezbollah’s displacement of tens of thousands of Israelis. A spokesman for the ministry, Nasser Kana’ani, reportedly called Israel “maniacal” for bombing Hezbollah targets and attacked Western nations for not coming to Hezbollah’s defense. Notably, Hezbollah, alongside the government of Iran, is widely believed to have been behind the deadliest terrorist attack in the history of the Western Hemisphere prior to September 2001: the 1994 bombing of the Argentine-Israel Mutual Association (AMIA) headquarters in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people.
“He roundly criticized the muted response and support from the US and a number of other Western sponsors of Israel for the continuation of the Zionist regime’s crimes against Palestine,” Iran’s Tasnim News Agency reported of Kana’ani, “and its attempts to spread the war to the whole region, warning of the dangerous consequences of the Zionists’ new adventurism.”
Elsewhere in recent remarks, Tasnim reported that Kana’ani also publicly praised the October 7 Hamas massacre, which genocidal jihadists refer to as the “al-Aqsa Flood.”
“In an interview with Tasnim, Nasser Kanaani said the Al-Aqsa Storm operation has changed the strategic balance in favor of Palestine and the resistance groups,” Tasnim reported on Monday. “Echoing remarks by Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, Kanaani said the Al-Aqsa Storm operation has dispelled the myth of invincibility of the Israeli regime.”
The pro-Hezbollah messages out of Tehran on Sunday and Monday clashed with the statements President Pezeshkian, a recently inaugurated “moderate,” gave to the press as he began a visit to New York this week for the United Nations General Assembly.
“On behalf of the Islamic Republic of Iran, we convey the message of peace,” Pezeshkian said upon landing in New York, “and security and efforts at the materialization of the UN’s this year’s theme about peace and a future filled with security and development for all people.”
“Pezeshkian stressed that wars, bloodshed and massacre must be replaced by a world in which human beings can live comfortably irrespective of their color, race, ethnicity and region [sic],” Tasnim reported, quoting Pezeshkian as saying, “Sadly, the world we’re living in today is not like that. There are double standards that divide people into good and bad. Therefore, problems arise which we’re witnessing.”
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