In rare Friday sermon, Khamenei calls for fight against Israel

IRGC General Esmail Kowsari, who is currently a member of the Iranian parliament's national security committee, told Didban Iran website in Tehran: "Although the Lebanese Hezbollah is capable of confronting the IDF, we welcome the deployment of volunteer forces to Lebanon from Iran."

Kowsari also promised that Israel's spies and infiltrators in Lebanon will be identified and punished. Following the death of Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah in Beirut in an Israeli strike last week, some hardliners in Iran, including the former head of the international affairs department of Khamenei's office and former lawmaker and intelligence officer Mohammad Hassan Asafari insisted that volunteers from Iran should be deployed to Lebanon.

Hardliners in Iran made similar claims last year, vowing to send millions of volunteers to Gaza following the October 7 attack on Israel and the outbreak of war. However, reaching Gaza was physically impossible at the time. Now, in response to these renewed statements, Iranians opposed to the Islamic Republic are pointing out that the road to Lebanon is open, and those who truly “volunteer” should have no hesitation in going.

Meanwhile, videos circulating on social media showed banners calling for the deployment of Iranian combatants through Tehran airport. A viewer who shared one of these videos with Iran International TV mentioned that buses were on-site to transport volunteers to the airport, but no actual deployment plan seemed to be in place upon arrival.

Kowsari further opined that Israeli forces are not capable of being involved in military actions in two fronts in Gaza and Lebanon, despite clear evidence to the contrary.

Another IRGC General Morteza Rafighdoost, who was the Islamic Republic's IRGC Minister from 1982 to 1988, said in an interview that "All options including deploying military forces from Iran to Lebanon and the Golan Heights in Syria is on Iran's agenda."

Rafighdoost claimed that "Iran has the manpower for decades of war against all the world powers." He also stated that Iran does not need the support of Russia or China in its confrontation with Israel. Furthermore, he boasted that Iran’s massive ballistic missile attack on Israel had brought joy to "hundreds of millions of people" worldwide, despite widespread condemnation of the attack and evidence showing that many missiles failed to hit their targets.

Meanwhile, aviation experts on social media criticized Iranian officials for not clearing the country's airspace before launching the October 1 attack. Videos on social media show passenger aircraft changing route over Urmia and landing in Shiraz against a backdrop of missiles flying in the sky despite the obvious danger for civilians. In the meantime, some failing missiles dropped in areas including Zanjan near Tehran.

In another interview, IRGC General Nosrat Ahvazian claimed that at least two million Iranians were ready to be deployed to Lebanon to fight Israel. However, in the same interview, he dismissed Israeli officials’ promises of a major retaliatory attack on Iran following Tehran's ballistic missile strike on Tuesday night. Interestingly, despite initially citing the two million figure, Ahvazian later stated that 400,000 Iranian "resistance fighters" were prepared for deployment to Lebanon, contradicting his earlier claim.

Ahvazian who led a secret IRGC headquarters during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, further claimed that tens of Iranian youths call him over the phone every day and beg to be deployed to Lebanon.

In a more strange comment, Ahvazian said that the reason why Israeli forces have attacked Lebanon is that they want to flee Gaza where they have a hard time fighting Hamas.

These and similar remarks about Iranians' willingness to fight in Lebanon seem to be part of the IRGC's psychological operations aimed at masking their own and the public’s fear of an impending major strike on Iran’s infrastructure, as promised by Israeli officials.

Three key questions arise about the "True Promise II" operation: Why did the Islamic Republic take this action despite concerns over "Netanyahu's trap," especially after the failure of "True Promise I" in April? Has the government provided a verifiable, fact-based report on the operation? And finally, what will the consequences be?

Two months of hesitation

In response to Ismail Haniyeh’s elimination, the Iranian government hesitated for two months, grappling with doubts. However, after Nasrallah’s removal, they decided to act more swiftly. The dilemma following Haniyeh’s death was the risk of sparking a large-scale war with Israel versus losing credibility among the regime’s loyalists and regional allies.

After Nasrallah's death, hardliners inside Iran demanded "severe revenge." Hamas and Hezbollah awaited Iran’s support amidst Israel’s devastating attacks, creating pressure on the government. These expectations had to be balanced against the serious risks of a direct confrontation with Israel.

In the end, the government chose to reassure Hamas and Hezbollah of its commitment to their cause and risk more conflict. Now, the ball is in Israel's court, and Israeli officials have indicated that the response would be "painful".

Reports suggest that targets could include key oil export terminals like Khark or vital oil and gas pipelines, impacting the government’s revenue streams without damaging infrastructure essential to the public, such as power plants. Netanyahu aims to avoid rallying the Iranian people to the regime’s side in this conflict.

Propaganda

Within 24 hours of the attack, the IRGC and the Islamist government’s propaganda apparatus released two sets of false or unverifiable claims. The first was the missile count. Most international and Israeli sources reported around 180-200 missiles. But Iranian state-controlled media said 400—higher than the 300 projectiles used in the "True Promise I" operation, likely to emphasize the second attack's increased power.

Additionally, the IRGC claimed that 90% of the missiles hit Israel, a figure that cannot be verified by ground observations or reports from numerous news agencies.

Consequences

The IRGC said the operation was in retaliation for the deaths of Hassan Nasrallah, Ismail Haniyeh, and Abbas Nilfroushan. This would be a much weaker grounds to justify a missile attack compared to the one in April, which was a response to Israel's attack on its consulate building in Damascus.

So the situation now is materially different.

True Promise II has potentially exposed the Islamic Republic to significant consequences. Following the events of October 1, Netanyahu could now justify targeting any location in Iran without facing significant legal obstacles, defending such actions in international forums.

Whether or not the Islamic Republic's missiles successfully hit their intended targets is secondary; the primary issue is that Israel's national sovereignty has been violated, giving it grounds for retaliation under international law.

With this attack, the Islamic Republic not only made itself and its public infrastructure legitimate targets for Israel but may have conveyed the limits of offensive military options. The country lacks a modern, powerful air force and defense system. Since the Iran-Iraq war, not a single civilian shelter has been built to protect against large-scale air strikes.

These shortcomings have led regime security experts to call for testing a nuclear bomb, while Ahmad Naderi, a senior member of the parliament, and other hardliners have stated that "the time has come to revise the nuclear doctrine."

No military action was expected on Thursday, Biden added.

Asked if the United States would support Israeli strikes on Iranian oil facilities, Biden said: "We’re in discussion of that. I think - I think that would be a little - anyway."

The remarks were at times clipped and occurred in a series of back-and-forth questions with a group of journalists as the presidential helicopter was preparing to depart.

Biden took issue with one journalist's characterization of whether the United States will "allow" its main partner in the region to carry out an attack.

"First of all, we don’t allow Israel. We advise Israel. And there’s nothing going to happen today. We’ll talk about that later," he said.

Israel has vowed to retaliate against Iran but has yet to specify any particular targets.

Speaking to CNN, Israel's envoy to the United Nations Danny Danon said Israel could not risk allowing the leadership of Iran - which is sworn to Israel's destruction - to mount its missiles with nuclear weapons.

"We saw the ballistic missiles flying into Israel - you ask yourself until when the Western world should wait - until they will actually be able to put together a nuclear bomb on a ballistic missile?"

"History has told us that we cannot take those chances when you have radical leaders threatening to destroy the Jewish nation," Dannon added.

US crude oil prices hit one-month highs and were up nearly $4 a barrel to $74 after Biden's comments.

Energy markets have been volatile as Mideast tensions have ramped up but have not reacted radically to the potential supply risks in the key Persian Gulf production area.

Iran launched around 180 missiles at Israel on Tuesday, the Israeli military said. The attack was largely repulsed with US and Western help but several missiles landed, including on an Israeli air base.

It was the biggest direct confrontation between the Islamic Republic and Jewish State and brings their rivalry which has simmered for over four decades toward the brink of war.

Biden had told reporters on Wednesday that the United States did not support a strike on Iranian nuclear sites.

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller later on Thursday detailed further the breadth of US-Israeli contacts.

"We are also having conversations with them about the shape of that campaign, the scope of that campaign, what their targets are going to be."

As analysts work to interpret Israel's decisions and the growing challenges it faces, President Joe Biden and some Western allies have criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hardline approach toward Iran's proxies. They describe this stance as "unhelpful," attributing part of the ongoing attacks from Iran and its allies, which have intensified since October 2023, to Israel's own actions.

Nearly a year since Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023, it is ever more apparent that even those in the highest seats of power require a sobering reminder of the events that have plunged the Middle East into chaos. Let there be no ambiguity: circumstantial evidence and irrefutable facts make plain that any perceived obstinacy on Prime Minister Netanyahu’s part in the drawn-out ceasefire talks is a necessary answer to crises not of Israel’s making. These dire circumstances have been thrust upon Israel, the Palestinians, the Lebanese, and the Iranians alike by the malevolent machinations of Iran’s mullahs and their armed henchmen. It is they who have brewed this bitter draught, imperiling the peace of the Middle East—and indeed, the world.

The road to escalation

The present crisis was unleashed in the early hours after Hamas's brutal assault upon southern Israel on October 7, 2023. As Israel moved swiftly to repel and extinguish the invaders in the south, Hezbollah—Iran’s foremost armed proxy in the region and Israel’s northern neighbor—opened a barrage of projectiles on October 8 upon northern Israel, forcing the nation into a multi-front struggle against Iran’s sprawling web of armed proxies. By the dawn of 2024, the flames of conflict, fanned by these proxies, had set the entire region ablaze.

Over the past year, and most markedly since February 2024, the Biden administration has sought to fortify its military might in the region, deploying a formidable fleet—several aircraft carriers, an attack nuclear submarine, and a host of air squadrons—all with the declared purpose of deterrence. Yet, whilst thus brandishing its strength, it has exerted ever-mounting pressure upon Israel to curtail its operations in Gaza and assume a more flexible stance in ceasefire talks with Hamas. Accompanying these efforts has been a tireless shuttle diplomacy led by the administration’s foremost emissaries—Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, CIA Chief William Burns, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, and, as of March 2024, Special Envoy for Lebanon Amos Hochstein. However, this flurry of diplomatic ventures has, thus far, yielded but scant fruit and remains barren of tangible success.

In the spring of 2024, the IRGC and Hezbollah, hand in glove, fortified their forces and missile sites along Israel’s northern frontier, with the express aim of forcing Israel's hand in the faltering ceasefire talks with Hamas. To secure full coordination and devise new schemes—including the rumored audacious incursion into northern Israel, mirroring Hamas’s brazen October 7 assault on the south—Tehran dispatched several of its IRGC high command, led by General Zahedi, to Damascus.

On April 1, in a bold pre-emptive strike, Israel eliminated General Zahedi and his lieutenants within the very walls of the Iranian embassy compound in Damascus—an act swiftly condemned by some as a breach of international law but vindicated by the exposure of Iran's exploitation of diplomatic immunity, flouting the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

Iran’s reprisal came on April 13, unleashing a slow-motion barrage of hundreds of projectiles upon Israel. Six days later, on April 19, Israel struck back, dismantling a critical anti-aircraft radar system within an airbase deep in the Iranian heartland. This was merely the prelude to what followed. On July 31, Israel struck down Hamas’s political chief, Ismael Haniyeh, in Tehran—a blow that disgraced Iran's intelligence and marred President Masoud Pezeshkian's inauguration. And on September 27, Israel eliminated Hezbollah’s Secretary General, Hassan Nasrallah, in Beirut, marking a decisive shift in the balance of power.

On the very day that Iran unleashed nearly 200 projectiles upon Israel on October 1, 2024, Israel commenced its limited ground incursions against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. At this moment, not just the region, but the entire West, stands confronted with a stark and ominous reality: A nuclear threshold state—Iran—has openly demonstrated its resolve to strike at Israel, for a second time, employing ballistic missiles that stands but a few short strides away from being armed with nuclear warheads. Furthermore, Iran’s formidable proxy, Hezbollah, however hitherto somewhat decapitated, bruised, battered, and on its backheels, holds an arsenal of tens of thousands of rockets and precision-guided missiles, poised and ready to be hurled upon Israel at any given moment.

Dilemmas and options

Those who strive to prevent a region-wide conflict would be wise to confront the stark realities of the Middle East as they truly are. It is not simply a matter of averting a conflict that looms on the horizon—for that conflict is already upon us. Rather, their task is to prevent the entire region from spiraling into total war—a total war overshadowed by the specter of nuclear proliferation, driven by a Shia fundamentalist theocracy whose professed aim for the past 45 years has been the destruction of the State of Israel, and whose leaders have openly threatened to accelerate their march towards nuclear armament as of May 8, 2024.

Indeed, as the world held its breath, anticipating Iran’s reprisal for the elimination of General Zahedi by Israel, the author of this very piece observed on April 10, 2024, that Iran might hasten its march toward nuclear armament, seeking to wield such weapons as a deterrent against Israel and the United States. Israel has sounded the alarm to the world since at least 2004, but those warnings have all too often fallen upon deaf ears.

In this grave hour, it is certain that the majority of Israelis stand as one, ready to support their government should it act to vanquish any threat to the very existence of the Jewish State. Of all perils upon the horizon, none is more immediate than the specter of Iran's nuclear program. Its destruction—whether partial or total—is not merely a strategic aim but a matter of survival. Equally vital is the crippling of Iran’s military-industrial capabilities. Let there be no delusion: Iran has become a purveyor of military drones, missiles, and munitions, threatening the peace and stability of the Trans-Atlantic world, and proving itself a menace not just to the region but to the global order.

Israel faces the delicate task of navigating the goodwill of Iran and Lebanon, nations it may need to strike. Yet, solace lies in the deep bitterness harbored by millions of Iranians and Lebanese against the Shia clerics and their armed minions, who have brought years of turmoil and economic ruin. The recent deployment of anti-riot forces across Iran—to quash any celebration after Hassan Nasrallah’s elimination—reveals the depths to which the regime has fallen in the eyes of Iranians, who valiantly rose in 2022 to cast off the mullahs, though in vain. A similar sense of relief resounds in Lebanon, Nasrallah's own land, exposing the growing chasm between the people and their so-called protectors.

Netanyahu, keenly attuned to this discontent, directly addressed the Iranian and Lebanese peoples, urging them to rise and shatter the chains imposed by Hezbollah and the Islamic Republic of Iran—appeals that resonated deeply. Thus, Israel would be wise to wield its might with utmost precision, striking at the military-industrial sinews of both the Iranian regime and Hezbollah. If Israel chooses to target Iran’s petrochemical plants—lifeblood of revenue for the ruling echelon and the IRGC—and their refineries, it would deliver a grievous blow to a regime already struggling to provide petrol to its own citizens, despite its status as an oil-exporter. Such a crippling of economic power would shake the very foundations upon which the regime's dominion rests.

On a final, yet vital note of protocol, Israel has, throughout its history, scrupulously refrained from the assassination of heads of state or government, even amidst its most formidable foes. As the fog of war clouds the judgment of many, any such speculation that Israel intends to strike down Ali Khamenei verily appears as naught but a far-fetched fancy.

The fallout

Israel must brace itself to weather condemnation from both friend and foe, should it unleash devastating blows upon the Islamic Republic of Iran and Hezbollah in the coming days and weeks. Such rebuke, though it may ring loud and strident, shall, in all probability, dissipate into the ether, drowned by the manifold crises with which humanity now grapples. From a contested US presidential election to the grim intensification of the Russo-Ukrainian War, and any unforeseen calamities that may yet darken our shared destiny, these cries of censure shall become mere whispers, lost to the winds of time.

In the final reckoning, Israel’s strikes may prove fatal to Hezbollah, dismantling it as a paramilitary behemoth—a state within the Lebanese state—and reducing it to a mere political faction. The twin blows of military decimation and economic ruin upon Iran’s economic and nuclear infrastructure may well mark the beginning of the end for a regime that has held sway over Iran for nearly half a century. Yet, let none forget that such regimes seldom relinquish power without a sanguinary struggle, as they stare into the abyss of their own collapse.

Opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily the views of Iran International

Some speculated that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's prominent appearance to lead Friday prayers in Tehran on October 4 might signal a new era, potentially marked by Iran's withdrawal from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), as hardliners on state TV suggested. There was also widespread anticipation that Khamenei could announce the weaponization of Iran’s controversial nuclear program. On social media, some Iranians even suggested that Khamenei's next move might be pursuing the development of a nuclear bomb.

Political analysts were less direct than social media users in their assessments. International relations analyst Reza Nasri conveyed a nuanced perspective to Etemad newspaper in Tehran, suggesting that "Iran's defense doctrine operates independently of public sentiment. Decisions are made at higher levels of the political structure, likely referring to Khamenei's office, based on all indications. Nonetheless, the regime has yet to make a definitive decision regarding the pursuit of nuclear weapons."

According to Etemad, the IRGC's Javan newspaper, however, wrote in May that "The strategic implication of the rhetoric surrounding a shift in Iran's defense doctrine is that, regardless of whether we possess nuclear weapons, the United States should recognize Iran as a nuclear power, given our capacity to develop them. This approach effectively sidesteps the ongoing discourse about the nuclear issue."

However, the greatest fear for a nation still haunted by the memories of the 1980s Iran-Iraq war is that escalating military actions between Iran and Israel could spiral into a prolonged and far more destructive conflict.

Iran kept the aviation industry was kept in the dark about the imminent attack. Videos on social media show passenger aircraft changing route over Urmia and landing in Shiraz against a backdrop of missiles flying in the sky despite the obvious danger, creating further terror for Iranians.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told reporters in Tehran that the government let the United States know about the attack via the Swiss Embassy in Tehran after it was done. However, it was the United States that informed the world of the upcoming attack more than two hours in advance.

Aviation experts on social media revealed that Iranian airspace was finally cleared only at the end of the missile attack. In the meantime, some failing missiles dropped in areas including Zanjan near Tehran.

Some Iranians reminded the government that Israel has provided bomb shelters for its citizens while if missile strikes occur in Iran, the people have no shelter other than the basements of high-rise buildings where they could possibly be buried alive in heavy bombardments. The call for shelters and a demand for briefings by officials on the situation was made repeatedly on social media. Lack of concrete and accurate reporting by the official media outlets make the situation even more chaotic and terrifying.

Speculations on what exactly Israel's reaction to Iran's attacks might be are even more terrifying for ordinary Iranians. Iranian social media user Ehsan Soltani, a student in Middle east Studies at the University of Venice, summed up some of the possible scenarios as: "Attacks with deep psychological impact such as the attacks on pagers in Lebanon, strikes on Iran's missile depots, assassination of top military commanders and political leaders, attacks on Iran's nuclear establishments and infrastructure such as refineries."

While none of these scenarios may come to pass, the mere possibility of them is deeply unsettling.