Iran’s supreme leader and Tehran’s propaganda arms have reacted to the mass killings in Israel with glee.
Iran’s supreme leader and Tehran’s propaganda arms have reacted to the mass killings in Israel with glee.
I n the days since Hamas massacred hundreds of Israeli civilians, the Iranian regime has repeatedly praised the “historic” attack — and yet it continues to assert that it was not involved, despite reporting to the contrary.
Iranian supreme leader Khamenei triumphantly called for Israel’s eradication, while Hamas gunmen continued to hunt down Israelis in parts of the country near the Gaza Strip over the weekend. Khamenei and the state propaganda outlets under his regime’s control are now walking a fine line in the face of news reports indicating that the Islamic Republic played a significant coordinating role in the attack: simultaneously hailing the brutal mass killings of Israelis and denying any Iranian involvement.
A veteran Iran analyst suggested that the regime’s approach may be defensive. “The Supreme Leader’s comments appear a bit like ‘the lady doth protest too much,’” Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told National Review. “It’s clear the regime understands Israel means business and intends to respond, but perhaps his comments, which stand in stark contrast to the stream of Iranian officials gloating, aims at minimizing the potential and direct blowback for Tehran.”
Khamenei emphasized that point in a speech he delivered Tuesday at the graduation ceremony for students at the Imam Ali Officer University, an Iranian military academy.
“Of course, the entire Islamic world is obliged to support the Palestinians, and God willing they will support them. But this action was carried out by the Palestinians themselves. Intelligent designers, the brave youth, and active self-sacrificing Palestinians have been able to create this epic,” he said, according to a video of the speech that he posted to Twitter/X. He repeatedly denied Iran’s involvement throughout his remarks.
The Iranian leader seemed to be tamping down his triumphant statements in response to reporting by the Wall Street Journal, citing Hamas and Hezbollah sources, that Iran played a key role in planning the attack over several months and that it ultimately gave its approval last week.
U.S. and Israeli officials have said they do not yet have any indication that Iran played a central role in planning and authorizing the attack. But both see Iran’s hand in the background. Washington has already labeled Hamas a foreign terrorist organization and has condemned Iran for providing funding and arms to the group, and top White House officials, including national-security adviser Jake Sullivan, called Iran “complicit” in the terrorist assault.
“If you train people on how to use weapons, you expect them to eventually use them,” a Western intelligence official told the Washington Post, in its own report on Iran’s involvement in the attack this weekend.
The Post also reported that Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said in an interview that the group received $70 million in assistance from Iran and that Tehran assisted Hamas with the manufacturing of rockets and drones. The paper also revealed that Hamas trained with Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah personnel in Lebanon.
That stream of commentary celebrating the killings started immediately after the Hamas assault commenced.
The regime’s official newspaper, called “Iran,” posted a celebratory message online after the official Israeli death toll hit 1,000 yesterday.
Iran’s Kayhan propaganda outlet, which is closely aligned with Khamenei, boasted that 300,000 Palestinians are preparing to enter war with Israel.
Iran’s Nour News, which is controlled by the regime’s Supreme National Security Council, has spent the past few days talking up the terrorist assault as an epochal development that shows the strength of forces that want to eliminate Israel. An article on Sunday appeared with the headline: “Al-Aqsa storm; Resistance’s prowess and weak remarks of a losing horse!” Al Aqsa Storm is Hamas’s title for the terrorist assault, using the name of the mosque that sits atop the Temple Mount. The piece further said that “the Palestinian resistance groups took a historic revenge against the crimes of the child-killing and usurping Zionist regime.”
“Al-Aqsa storm operation was unprecedented in the last 60 years, before this historic operation, the actions of the resistance movement were mainly defensive or as special and limited operations against the invasion and aggressions of the Zionist regime, but from the point of view of using the principle of surprise, the depth of the operation, the use of various weapons, ground advance, extent of captured lands, inflicting high casualties to the occupiers and capturing hundreds of Zionists, this operation is certainly unique, and it shows the continuous and ever expanding strength of the resistance front,” the Nour article stated.
A piece that ran on Monday said the cancellation of flights to Israel by several international airlines is “the sign of insecurity in the house of the spider.”
“While having extensive economic and credit effects for the Zionist regime, the noteworthy point is that the cancellation of international flights to Israel will also have very critical psychological consequences for the residents of the occupied territories,” said the article, which also celebrated fluctuations in the value of Israel’s shekel.
But today, Nour highlighted Khamenei’s speech denying involvement, concluding with a further warning for Israel and the U.S. as the Israel Defense Forces carry out air strikes against Hamas targets in Gaza.
“In the end, the supreme leader of the revolution warned the heads and decision makers of the usurping Zionist regime and their supporters and said, let them know that the massacre and mass killing of the people of Gaza will bring a greater calamity upon them.”