BEIRUT (Reuters): Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Friday that Iran and its regional allies will not back down, after an Israeli attack on Beirut that is thought to have targeted the heir apparent to the assassinated leader of Tehran-backed Hezbollah.
Iran raised the stakes when it fired missiles at Israel on Tuesday, partly in retaliation for Israel’s killing of Hezbollah secretary general Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, a towering figure who turned the group into a powerful armed and political force with reach across the Middle East.
Israel has vowed to respond and oil prices have risen on the prospect of a possible attack on Iran’s oil facilities.
“The resistance in the region will not back down even with the killing of its leaders,” Khamenei said in a rare appearance leading Friday prayers in Tehran, mentioning Nasrallah in his speech and calling its attack on Israel legal and legitimate.
Iran will not “procrastinate nor act hastily to carry out its duty” in confronting Israel, he said, without issuing a direct threat to Israel or the United States but grasping the barrel of a rifle that stood to his left.
The semi-official Iranian news agency SNN quoted Revolutionary Guards deputy commander Ali Fadavi as saying on Friday that if Israel attacks, Tehran would target Israeli energy and gas installations.
Iran’s escalating rhetoric comes as the fate of Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine, rumoured to be Nasrallah’s successor, remains unknown. Axios reporter Barak Ravid cited three Israeli officials as saying that Safieddine had been targeted in an underground bunker in Beirut overnight but that his fate was not clear.
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