The escalation of the war in the Middle East does not stop. After Israel’s continued attacks on the Gaza Strip spread to Lebanon due to the presence of the Shiite militia Hezbollah, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday that the death of the commanders in the Israeli attacks of recent days in Lebanon, “will not bring the Lebanese militias to their knees.”
This is Tehran’s first reference to the crisis triggered on Lebanon’s southern border with Israel. Specifically, Khamenei assured that “some of the effective and valuable forces of Hezbollah were killed, which certainly caused some damage to Hezbollah, but it was not the kind of damage that could bring the group to its knees,” state agency IRNA reported.
Last week, Lebanon suffered an attack on electronic devices followed by bombings against the Shiite regions of southern Lebanon, which continue and which, together, caused more than 650 deathsincluding many civilians, including children. Iran’s highest political and religious authority considered its ally Hezbollah and groups such as the Palestinian Hamas and Yemen’s Houthis as the victors in the war against Israel.
All of them constitute the informal anti-Israeli alliance “Axis of Resistance”led precisely by Tehran, which maintains a fierce enmity towards Israel that is reflected in a secret war with cyber attacks, assassinations and sabotage.
“If the evil Zionist regime had been able to defeat these forces, whether in Gaza, the West Bank or Lebanon, he wouldn’t have needed to show his face to the world in such a dark and heinous way, committing crimes by attacking homes, schools, hospitals, children and women,” he said at a meeting with veterans of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.
Khamenei also criticized US support for Israel in the Gaza war and said Washington had information about every step the Israelis were planning to take, referring to the Pager explosions in Lebanonamong other actions. “The Americans say they are not involved and they have no information, but they have information and they are involved and they need the victory of the Zionist regime,” he added.
At the same time, Chinese authorities have offered their support to the Iranian government in the face of the crisis. Increased violence in the Middle East and the increasing attacks by Israeli forces against positions of the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, a situation that has raised alarm within the international community.
