An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman told reporters on Monday that Tehran is planning to “definitely respond” to an Israeli counterattack in late October that reportedly neutralized key missile manufacturing sites.
Spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei was not alone among Iranian officials hinting at an imminent attack against Israel on the eve of the American presidential election, in which the two top candidates on the ballot are offering significantly different policies on the Middle East. Former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, has promised to return to his policies of heavy human rights sanctions on Iran and isolating the rogue regime in the region, while Vice President Kamala Harris is part of an administration that undid many of those Trump sanctions and notoriously granted Iran access to $6 billion shortly before its terrorist proxy Hamas invaded Israel and killed 1,200 people on October 7, 2023.
Iran has spent much of the past two weeks threatening an attack on Israel following the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) airstrikes on October 26. The IDF’s actions, in turn, were a response to two separate Iranian attacks on Israeli soil: the launching of hundreds of missiles and other projectiles at Israel in April, and a second wave of attacks on October 1. The Iranian missiles were almost entirely unable to cause damage in the civilian areas they targeted.
The Iranian attacks on Israel are unprecedented, as Tehran typically uses proxies such as Hamas, Lebanese Hezbollah, the “Islamic Resistance in Iraq,” and the Houthi terrorists of Yemen, among others, to target Israel.
Baghaei, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, addressed the possibility of another Iranian attack against Israel on Monday, asserting that his regime “will definitely respond” to the IDF airstrikes, according to the Iranian state propaganda outlet PressTV.
“Supporting national sovereignty and territorial integrity of countries is a principle for us and we have proven this in practice,” he was quoted as saying. “We will use all our material and spiritual resources to respond to the aggressions of the Zionist regime (Israel) and will use all our resources with all our might in this regard.”
Separately, in comments on Sunday, a senior Iranian military official also vowed to attack Israel. The Iranian Tasnim News Agency reported that Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, the deputy head of the terrorist Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), said that “the operation will definitely be carried out” but did not offer any details on the extent of the attack or when Iran was planning to execute it.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, who is subordinate to “supreme leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, appeared to temper the expectations of a massive Iranian siege of Israel in the near future in comments on Sunday in which he suggested a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas could potentially prevent another Iranian attack.
“If they (the Israelis) revise their behavior, accept a ceasefire, and stop killing the oppressed and innocent people of the region, it could affect the type and intensity of our response,” Pezeshkian suggested. Iran’s officials insist that Israel’s war on Hamas is a “genocide” against all Palestinians and Arabs generally while simultaneously celebrating the slaughters Hamas terrorists committed on October 7.
Baghaei repeated the accusations of “genocide” on Monday: “In the 21st century, a real genocide is taking place but the international community has clearly failed. The [United Nations] Security Council is paralyzed by the obstacles created by the United States.”
Hamas is an explicitly genocidal organization calling for the extermination of the state of Israel and of the Jewish people.
On Monday, Pezeshkian claimed that Israel “would not dare attack us” and falsely claiming Iran keeps a massive missile arsenal as a purely defensive measure.
“He said the country has developed the defensive projectiles so parties such as the Israeli regime would not be able to target the Islamic Republic as they have been targeting the Gaza Strip or bomb any place or any person that they would desire,” PressTV relayed.
Adding to the contradicting messages out of Tehran, Khamenei himself threatened to hit America and Israel with a “teeth-breaking” attack for their refusal to cease operations to neutralize Iran-backed terrorist organizations.
“The enemies, both the U.S. and the Zionist regime, should know that they will definitely receive a teeth-breaking response for what they are doing against Iran and the resistance front,” Khamenei warned. “We are certainly doing everything necessary to prepare the Iranian nation to stand against arrogance, whether in terms of military readiness, armaments or political actions.”
Another Iranian official, Strategic Council on Foreign Relations head Kamal Kharrazi, suggested on November 1 that Iran could soon develop a nuclear bomb.
“If the Islamic Republic of Iran faces an existential threat, we will inevitably change the policy of our military doctrine [to allow nuclear weapons],” Kharrazi said, according to the Iranian state outlet PressTV. “We now have the necessary capability to produce [nuclear] weapons, and the only obstacle is the Leader’s fatwa that prohibits the production of nuclear weapons.”
The Iranian regime falsely maintains that Khamenei issued a fatwa, or religious edict, banning the development of nuclear weapons. It has never produced any official documentation, as is typical for fatwas, that such an edict exists.
