Iranian dictator Ayatollah Ali Khamenei celebrated the “de-Americanization” of the Middle East through the harrowing Hamas terrorist attack of October 7 on Israel while speaking on Wednesday to members of Iran’s brutal Basij militia.
Khamenei, who has repeatedly celebrated the terror onslaught and dismissed even the babies among the 1,200 Israelis and other civilians killed on October 7 as “not civilians,” claimed that the response to the Hamas atrocities had “destroyed the reputation of … the United States” and “ruined the reputation of Western culture and civilization” generally. Khamenei also railed against the “two-state solution” — a plan touted by much of the international left in which parts of Israel are carved out of the country to create a new nation of “Palestine” — instead calling for the complete destruction of Israel.
Iranian Foreign Ministry already claimed that Israel as a state had “totally collapsed” in late October.
Iran is the world’s most prolific state sponsor of terrorism and one of the primary funders of Hamas despite being a Shiite theocracy — Hamas is a Sunni Muslim terrorist group. A U.S. State Department report estimated in 2020 that Iran pays Hamas and a rival anti-Israel terror group, “Palestinian Islamic Jihad” (PIJ), $100 million a year. A spokesman for Hamas, Gilad Hamad, told the BBC on October 7 that Iran had offered “direct backing” for the terrorist attack on Israel.
Extensive evidence — including videos filmed by the terrorists themselves — of the October 7 Hamas attack indicates that the jihadists engaged in crimes against humanity, including gang rape, torture, mass killings of entire families in their homes, the desecration of corpses, and other atrocities. The terrorists flooded Israel from their stronghold of Gaza and entered residential communities, killing and abducting as many people as possible. Forensic experts found evidence of the torture and killing of people as young as newborns. About 250 people were abducted; some of those released in subsequent negotiations with Israel have testified to being tortured in Gaza after the attack.
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Joel B. Pollak / Breitbart NewsThe government of Iran responded to initial reports of the attack by staging a massive street party in Tehran on October 7. Attendees chanted “death to Israel” and “death to America” and were treated with free lemonade and a fireworks display to celebrate the mass killing of Israelis.
Iranians attend a gathering in Tehran to express their solidarity with Palestine after Hamas militants launched a deadly assault into Israel from the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023. (Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)
Supporters of Hamas refer to the attack as the “al-Aqsa flood.”
“The historic event of al-Aqsa Storm is against the Zionist regime [Israel] but it is aimed at de-Americanization,” Khamenei, speaking to the Basij, reportedly said. “This incident literally managed to disrupt the table of American policies in the region, and Allah willing, if this Storm continues, it will wipe out the whole table.”
Khamenei described the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) operations to prevent a subsequent Hamas attack as “barbaric and cruel” for targeting Hamas terror hubs and claimed that it “not only destroyed the reputation of the regime, but also that of the United States.”
“It took away the reputation of several renowned European countries, and also ruined the reputation of Western culture and civilization,” Khamenei railed.
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Joel PollakThe “supreme leader” appeared to threaten further similar terrorist attacks on civilians in Israel, warning, “Al-Aqsa Storm will not run out of steam and they should know that the current situation will not continue.”
Khamenei then ranted about the “two-state solution” being “treacherous” because it would allow Israel to continue to exist.
“Of course, the occupiers [Israelis] have no right but the Palestinians themselves whether in Palestine or in the neighboring countries of Palestine or in the camps or in other places,” Khamenei insisted, adding that the pro-Hamas position was “a globally-favored, acceptable and civilized logic for the administration of Palestine.”
Iran does not recognize the legitimacy of the existence of Israel.
“The entire land of Palestine, from the sea to the river, belongs only to the original Palestinians,” Iranian Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian said in October, referring to the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. The stretch of land includes the entirety of Israel.
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Joel B. Pollak / Breitbart NewsThe Basij are a paramilitary used to repress protests within Iran. It is part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which is both a formal wing of the Iranian armed forces and a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.
Elsewhere on Wednesday, at another event commemorating “National Basij Week,” the head of the IRGC, Major General Hossein Salami, declared that Israel could not last more than two days if Hamas committed another crime against humanity like that of October 7.
“If the engine of another operation like Al-Aqsa (Strom) is turned on, the time needed for the dissolution of the fake regime (Israel) will be only 48 hours so that … the regime will be totally wiped out,” Salami predicted, according to the Iranian Tasnim News Agency.
Salami claimed that Hezbollah, a Shiite terrorist organization bankrolled by Iran, could attack Tel Aviv, one of Israel’s largest cities and a tourist hub. Hezbollah has celebrated the Hamas attack but, at press time, has not taken an active role in supporting the group in its war against Israel.
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