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Khamenei Threatens Israel, US with ‘Crushing Response’
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks during a meeting with a group of students in Tehran, Iran, Nov. 2, 2022. Photo: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
JNS.org – Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei stepped up his bellicose rhetoric on Saturday, threatening both Israel and the United States.
“The United States of America and the Zionist regime will definitely receive a crushing response for what they do against Iran and the Resistance Front,” the ayatollah tweeted.
An hour earlier, Khamenei had tweeted: “We will definitely do everything necessary to prepare the Iranian nation for confronting the Arrogant Powers, whether militarily, in terms of armament, or politically. Our officials are already working on this.”
Although he did not specify when and how Tehran was intending to act, the threat comes on the backdrop of a New York Times report suggesting that Khamenei recently instructed the country’s Supreme National Security Council to prepare for another assault on Israel.
Such an attack would be Iran’s third on the Jewish state, after ballistic missile assaults in April and October.
The US has warned Tehran that it would not be able to restrain Jerusalem in the event of another attack, Axios reported on Saturday, citing an American and a former Israeli official.
“We told the Iranians: We won’t be able to hold Israel back, and we won’t be able to make sure that the next attack will be [as] calibrated and targeted as the previous one,” the US official was quoted as saying.
In retaliation for the latest Iranian ballistic missile attack, on Oct. 26 dozens of Israeli aircraft, including refuelers and spy planes, struck targets across Iran in several waves over the course of a few hours. The targets reportedly included missile and drone manufacturing facilities and launch sites, as well as air-defense batteries, but not Iran’s nuclear program or energy infrastructure.
On Friday, Khamenei adviser Kamal Kharrazi told the Hezbollah-affiliated Al-Mayadeen outlet that the Islamic Republic would respond to Israel’s aerial attack at the appropriate time and manner.
According to the Times, Khamenei made that decision after reviewing a report from senior military commanders on the extent of the damage caused by the Israeli strikes.
Khamenei was said to have told his associates that the scope of Israel’s unprecedented Oct. 26 retaliatory strikes was “too large to ignore.”
The sources said that military commanders were readying a list of dozens of targets inside the Jewish state, but that the attack would likely occur after the US presidential election on Nov. 5 due to concern in Tehran that additional tensions in the region could boost Republican presidential nominee and former president Donald Trump.
US deploys B-52 bombers to Middle East
US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced on Saturday that B-52 bombers had arrived in the Middle East amid the Iranian threats against Israel and the United States.
“B-52 Stratofortress strategic bombers from Minot Air Force Base’s 5th Bomb Wing arrived in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility,” CENTCOM tweeted, with an accompanying picture of one of the massive planes on final approach.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered the deployment of the bomber aircraft along with US Navy warships, the Pentagon announced on Friday.
“In keeping with our commitments to the protection of US citizens and forces in the Middle East, the defense of Israel, and de-escalation through deterrence and diplomacy, the secretary of defense ordered the deployment of additional ballistic missile defense destroyers, fighter squadron and tanker aircraft, and several U.S. Air Force B-52 long-range strike bombers to the region,” Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said in a statement.
The US did not provide specific numbers of planes and ships sent to the region.
“These forces will begin to arrive in coming months as the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group prepares to depart,” Ryder added.
The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier and its strike group of three destroyers are scheduled to depart the Mideast in mid-November for their home port of San Diego.
The Lincoln and two of its destroyers are stationed in the Gulf of Oman, and the third destroyer is with two other warships in the Red Sea.
Eventually, the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier and its three warships will move to the Mediterranean Sea, but not before the Lincoln departs. The three destroyers will fill in the gap.
Ryder mentioned in the statement that the force buildup in the Middle East adds to the recent deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system to Israel and the Amphibious Ready Group Marine Expeditionary Unit (ARG/MEU) posture in the Eastern Mediterranean.
“These movements demonstrate the flexible nature of US global defense posture and US capability to deploy world-wide on short notice to meet evolving national security threats,” Ryder said.
“Secretary Austin continues to make clear that should Iran, its partners, or its proxies use this moment to target American personnel or interests in the region, the United States will take every measure necessary to defend our people.”
Jerusalem warns Baghdad it may attack Iraqi militias
Jerusalem has warned Baghdad that unless it reins in Iranian-backed militias launching drones and missiles at Israel, it could attack Iraq, according to a report in the Saudi website Elaph.
According to the report, Israel has identified and is monitoring targets belonging to the Iranian-backed militias and also Iraqi state targets and could start attacking them if the militias keep firing at the Jewish state.
Unnamed officials told Elaph that satellites are monitoring the movement of ballistic missiles and related equipment from Iran to Iraq, which could be used in an attack on Israel.
Iraqi sources expressed concern to the outlet that Tehran could be using Iraq to shift the fighting away from its territory.
The AP reported last week that Israel is under daily drone attack from Iraq, which the US and its partners have had to intercept.
According to the report, the UAV launches have been a problem since the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7, 2023, and are not related to any Iranian attack. However, a regional security official said that the drone attacks have increased in recent weeks, with an average of five a day and eight drones launched over a 24-hour period in the past week.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq is an umbrella organization composed of several Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias, including Kata’ib Hezbollah, Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba and Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhadaa. These groups operate both in Iraq and Syria under IRGC command.
Regime supporters mark 1979 hostage crisis
Supporters of the Iranian regime gathered outside the former US embassy in Tehran on Sunday to mark the anniversary of the 1979 hostage crisis with shouts of “Death to Israel, Death to America!”
The former embassy is currently a museum called the “Den of Spies” and is covered with anti-American murals.
The crowd also set Israeli and American flags on fire in the annual tradition.
IRGC chief Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami, in a speech at the Tehran rally, said that Israel and the US “cannot survive by slaughtering and killing Muslims.
“We always warn them that if they don’t change their behavior, they will go toward collapse and destruction,” Salami said.
Iranians took over the US embassy in Iran on Nov. 4, 1979, and kept 52 American diplomats and citizens hostage for 444 days. The hostage crisis ended on Jan. 20, 1981, when Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as president of the United States. No hostages were killed. Washington severed ties with Tehran in 1980, halfway through the crisis, and they have been frozen ever since.
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Iran Rejects US Nuclear Proposal, Says ‘Counteroffer’ Coming as Talks Stall Over Uranium Enrichment, Sanctions
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks during a meeting in Tehran, Iran, May 20, 2025. Photo: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
Iran has denounced the latest nuclear proposal from the United States as “unprofessional and untechnical,” reaffirming the country’s right to enrich uranium and announcing plans to present a counteroffer in the coming days.
“After receiving the American proposal regarding the Iranian nuclear program, we are now preparing a counteroffer,” Ali Shamkhnai, political adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in an interview on Wednesday.
Shamkhani criticized the White House draft proposal as “not well thought out,” emphasizing its alleged failure to address sanction relief — a key demand for Tehran under any deal with Washington.
“There is no mention whatsoever of lifting sanctions in the latest American proposal, even though the issue of sanctions is a fundamental matter for Iran,” Shamkhnai said.
The Iranian official also warned that Tehran will not allow the US to dismantle its “peaceful nuclear program” or force uranium enrichment down to zero.
“Iran will never relinquish its natural rights,” Shamkhani said.
Washington’s draft proposal for a new nuclear deal was delivered by Omani officials — who have been mediating negotiations between Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff — during last month’s talks in Rome.
On Wednesday, Khamenei dismissed such an offer, saying it “contradicts our nation’s belief in self-reliance” and runs counter to Iran’s key objectives.
“The proposal that the Americans have presented is 100 percent against our interests,” the Iranian leader said during a televised speech.
“The rude and arrogant leaders of America repeatedly demand that we should not have a nuclear program. Who are you to decide whether Iran should have enrichment?” Khamenei continued.
After five rounds of talks, diplomatic efforts have yet to yield results as both adversaries clash over Iran’s demand to maintain its domestic uranium enrichment program — a condition the White House has firmly rejected.
In April, Tehran and Washington held their first official nuclear negotiation since the US withdrew from a now-defunct 2015 nuclear deal that had imposed temporary limits on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanction relief.
Since taking office, US President Donald Trump has sought to curtail Tehran’s potential to develop a nuclear weapon that could spark a regional arms race and pose a threat to Israel.
Meanwhile, Iran seeks to have Western sanctions on its oil-dependent economy lifted, while maintaining its nuclear enrichment program — which the country insists is solely for civilian purposes.
As part of the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran — which aims to cut the country’s crude exports to zero and prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon — Washington has been targeting Tehran’s oil industry with mounting sanctions.
Amid the ongoing diplomatic deadlock, Israel has declared it will never allow the Islamist regime to acquire nuclear weapons, as the country views Iran’s nuclear program as an existential threat.
However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to uphold any agreement that prevents Tehran from enriching uranium.
“But in any case, Israel maintains the right to defend itself from a regime that is threatening to annihilate it,” Netanyahu said in a press conference last month, following reports that Jerusalem could strike Iranian nuclear sites if ongoing negotiations between Washington and Tehran fail.
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Day After Colorado Attack, Founder of Anti-Israel Group Chides Activists Who Are Insufficiently ‘Pro-Resistance’
Nerdeen Kiswani, founder of WithinOurLifetime (WOL), leading a pro-Hamas demonstration in New York City on Aug. 14, 2024. Photo: Michael Nigro via Reuters Connect
Nerdeen Kiswani, the founder of the radical anti-Israel organization Within Our Lifetime, chastised those within the pro-Palestinian movement who only support “resistance” in the abstract but not in practice following Sunday’s antisemitic attack in Boulder, Colorado.
“A lot of people who call themselves anti-Zionist or pro-resistance don’t actually understand what resistance is,” Kiswani posted on X/Twitter on Monday. “They support it in theory, but when it shows up in practice, they hesitate, distance themselves, or shift the conversation entirely.”
She continued, “And it makes it even harder for those of us who are principled to take public stances. We’re already marginalized, already painted as extreme or dangerous and that isolation only deepens when others in the movement won’t stand firm when it counts.”
Kiswani’s comments came the day after a man threw Molotov cocktails at a Boulder gathering where participants were rallying in support of the Israeli hostages who remain in captivity in Gaza — which resulted in 15 injuries, including some critically, in what US authorities called a targeted terrorist attack. Her tweets also came less than two weeks after a gunman murdered two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC, while they were leaving an at the Capital Jewish Museum hosted by the American Jewish Committee. In both attacks, the perpetrator yelled “Free Palestine” as they targeted innocent civilians, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
After Kiswani’s social media posts sparked some backlash among pro-Israel users on X, she provided limited pushback on the idea that it was an expression of support for the prior day’s attack in Colorado.
“Zionists are freaking out in the QTs about this, insisting it’s about Colorado,” she wrote. “Newsflash: the world doesn’t revolve around you. Resistance hasn’t stopped in Gaza, look at what just happened in Jabalia [where three IDF soldiers were killed] for instance. The perpetual victimhood is getting old.”
However, Kiswani did not say her comment had no connection to the attack in Colorado, and she did not say that she opposed the firebombing.
Kiswani and her group, Within Our Lifetime (WOL), have been at the forefront of anti-Israel and pro-Hamas activism since Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists killed 1,200 people and abducted 251 hostages during their invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, a massacre that started the war in Gaza.
On Oct. 8, 2023, one day after the biggest single-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, WOL organized a protest to celebrate the prior day’s attack, which it described as an effort to “defend the heroic Palestinian resistance.” Kiswani notably refused to condemn Hamas and the Oct. 7 massacre following the atrocities.
Then, in Apil 2024, Kiswani refused to condemn the chant “Death to America” and organized a mass demonstration to block the “arteries of capitalism” by staging a blockade of commercial shipping ports across the world in protest of Western support for the Jewish state. That same month, she was banned from Columbia University’s campus in New York City after leading chants calling for an “intifada,” or violent uprising.
The following month, Kiswani led a demonstration in Brooklyn, New York in which she lambasted the local police department, claimed then-US President Joe Biden will soon die, and called for the destruction of Israel.
That proceeded the activist saying she does not want Zionists “anywhere” in the world while speaking in defense of a person who called for “Zionists” to leave a crowded subway car in New York City.
WOL, which planned a protest last year to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 massacre, was also behind demonstrations at the Nova Music Festival exhibit, which commemorated the more than 300 civilians slaughtered by Hamas while at a music festival.
The latter protest prompted widespread condemnation, including from Biden and even progressive members of the US Congress who are outspoken against Israel.
US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), for example, posted on social media that the “callousness, dehumanization, and targeting of Jews on display at last night’s protest outside the Nova Festival exhibit was atrocious antisemitism – plain and simple.”
The post Day After Colorado Attack, Founder of Anti-Israel Group Chides Activists Who Are Insufficiently ‘Pro-Resistance’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel’s Defense Exports Hit Record $15 Billion in 2024 Despite European Pressure, Calls for Arms Embargo
Israeli troops on the ground in Gaza. Photo: IDF via Reuters
Israel reached a new all-time high in defense exports in 2024, nearing $15 billion — the fourth consecutive year of record-breaking sales — despite mounting international criticism over the war in Gaza and growing pressure from European countries to suspend arms deals.
In a press release on Wednesday, Israel’s Defense Ministry announced that defense exports reached over $14.7 billion last year — a 13 percent increase from 2023 — with more than half of the deals valued at over $100 million.
According to the ministry, Israel’s military exports have more than doubled over the past five years, highlighting the industry’s rapid expansion and growing global demand.
“This tremendous achievement is a direct result of the successes of the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] and defense industries against Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, the Ayatollah regime in Iran, and in additional arenas where we operate against Israel’s enemies,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement.
“The world sees Israeli strength and seeks to be a partner in it. We will continue strengthening the IDF and the Israeli economy through security innovation to ensure clear superiority against any threat – anywhere and anytime,” Katz continued.
In 2024, over half of the Jewish state’s defense contracts were with European countries — up from 35 percent the previous year — as many in the region have increased their defense spending following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Despite increasing pressure and widespread anti-Israel sentiment among European governments amid the current conflict in Gaza, this latest data seems to contradict recent calls by European leaders to impose an arms embargo on the Jewish state over its defensive campaign in Gaza against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
On Wednesday, Germany reversed its earlier threat to halt arms deliveries to Israel, reaffirming its commitment to continue cooperation and maintain defense contracts with Jerusalem.
“Germany will continue to support the State of Israel, including with arms deliveries,” German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul told lawmakers in parliament.
Last week, Berlin warned it would take unspecified measures against Israel if it continued its military campaign in Gaza, citing concerns that exported weapons were being used in violation of humanitarian law.
“Our full support for the right to exist and the security of the State of Israel must not be instrumentalized for the conflict and the warfare currently being waged in the Gaza Strip,” Wadephul said in a statement.
Germany would be “examining whether what is happening in the Gaza Strip is compatible with international humanitarian law,” he continued. “Further arms deliveries will be authorized based on the outcome of that review.”
Spain and Ireland are among the countries in Europe that have threatened or taken steps to limit arms deals with Israel, while others such as France have threatened unspecified harsh measures against the Jewish state.
According to the Israeli defense ministry’s report, since the outbreak of war on Oct. 7, 2023, after the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel, the operational successes and proven battlefield performance of Israeli systems have fueled strong international demand for Israel’s defense technology.
Last year, the export of missiles, rockets, and air defense systems reached a new high, making up 48 percent of the total deal volume — up from 36 percent in 2023.
Similarly, satellite and space systems exports surged, accounting for 8 percent of total deals in 2024 — quadrupling their share from 2 percent in 2023.
While Europe dominated Israel’s defense export market in 2024, significant portions also went to other regions. Asia and the Pacific made up 23 percent of total sales — slightly lower than in previous years, when the region approached 30 percent.
Exports to Abraham Accords countries fell to 12 percent, down from 23 percent in 2022, while North America remained stable at around 9 percent.
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