Iranian “supreme leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei led Islamic prayers honoring slain Hezbollah terrorist Hassan Nasrallah on Friday, attempting to lift spirits amid an unrelenting Israeli campaign against terrorism by declaring his country’s failed missile barrage on Israel “brilliant” and predicting a surge in jihadist recruitment.
Khamenei led the Friday prayers for the first time in five years, the dissident outlet Iran International noted, and the rarity of the occasion resulted in a large crowd gathering in Tehran. The “supreme leader,” now 85, spoke in both Persian and Arabic, urging the entire Islamic world to unite against the “tyrannical, plundering devils” of America and Israel.
He spent much of his address glorifying Nasrallah, a mass murderer responsible for at least thousands of deaths, including many Americans, and urging Iranians to support Hezbollah, Hamas, and other Iranian-funded terrorist proxies in the region.
Nasrallah ran Hezbollah, a Shiite jihadist terror organization, between 1992 and 2024. Hezbollah spent decades on efforts to kill Jews around the world, from supporting terrorist activity against Israel in the region to playing a prominent role in the deadliest terrorist attack in the Western Hemisphere before September 2001, the 1994 bombing of the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which killed 85 people. Nasrallah was eliminated in an Israeli airstrike on Hezbollah headquarters in Beirut, Lebanon, on September 27.
Khamenei referred to Nasrallah on Friday as “my brother, my dear one … the shining jewel of Lebanon.” He discouraged grief, however, declaring Nasrallah’s “martyrdom,” as he referred it, a “reviving, edifying, inspiring” moment that “brings hope,” according to a translation of the sermon by Iran’s Tasnim News Agency.
“It is our duty and the responsibility of all Muslims to repay our debt to the wounded, bloodied Lebanon,” Khamenei declared. “Hezbollah and the martyred Sayyid have taken steps in defense of Gaza and jihad for Al-Aqsa Mosque, delivering a blow to the usurping, cruel regime. They have provided a vital service to the entire region and the entire Muslim world.”
Khamenei claimed that attempts to eradicate the scourge of radical Islamic terrorism from the Middle East were a conspiracy between Israel and the United States to steal the region’s energy resources, to export “to the Western world while facilitating the import of goods and technology from the West to the region.”
“The main problem facing the region is foreign interference. The governments of the region are capable of establishing peace and security. Achieving this great, liberating goal requires the efforts and struggles of nations and governments,” he declared.
The Iranian leader concluded that Israel’s increasingly effective campaign to eliminate terrorists in Gaza and Lebanon following the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7, 2023, were actually backfiring, as they would inspire more Islamic violence.
“The consequence of this behavior is an increase in the anger and motivation of the people,” he claimed. “It fosters the emergence of more fighters, commanders, leaders, and an increase in the number of those who are willing to sacrifice their lives. It tightens the noose around the neck of the bloodthirsty wolf and will ultimately lead to the elimination of its disgraceful existence from the scene.”
The Tasnim translation of Khamenei’s statements omitted parts of the sermon, reported by Iran International, in which Khamenei defended a massive missile attack on Israel’s civilian population centers this week. The attack forced much of Israel’s population into bomb shelters but caused no casualties, and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reported minor damage to some military facilities.
Despite the clear failure of the attack, Khamenei applauded “the brilliant work of our forces just a few nights ago,” declaring the attack “was also completely within their rights.”
“Every people have the right to defend their land, homes, country, and interests against aggressors,” Khamanei said, apparently excluding Israelis from this declaration.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, who took office in July after campaigning as a “moderate” in Iran’s rigged presidential election, effusively celebrated Khamenei’s belligerent ravings on Friday, proclaiming the service for Nasrallah a “display of Iran’s power and unity.”
“With the presence of the Supreme Leader in the Friday Prayer, God willing, we will show the world a display of power, unity and solidarity,” Pezeshkian told reporters, according to Tasnim.
Pezeshkian was among the first to issue statements condemning the elimination of Nasrallah and declaring that Iran would soon seek revenge, hinting at a “decisive” Iranian attack.
“Addressing a cabinet session on Sunday, Pezeshkian once again strongly condemned Israel’s assassination of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader of the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah,” Iranian propaganda outlet PressTV reported on Monday, “in a massive airstrike on southern Beirut on Friday using American-supplied bunker-buster bombs.”
Pezeshkian called the hundreds of missiles his country shot at Israel this week a “great source of pride” that “proved the Israeli regime’s Iron Dome system is more fragile than glass,” despite their failure to inflict any casualties on the country.
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