Iran’s leader defended his country’s missile strikes on Israel this week, calling them “correct, logical, and lawful” in a rare public speech in Tehran on Friday.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told a crowd that the roughly 180 missiles it fired at Israel on Tuesday were the “minimum punishment” for what he called Israel’s “astonishing crimes,” as reported by the BBC.
Khamenei was leading Friday prayers at the time of his comments, the first such appearance since 2020, after a U.S. strike that killed Tehran’s senior-most military commander, Qasem Soleimani.
Israel is vowing a significant response against Iran for the missile barrage, which was retaliation for the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli airstrike last week in Beirut.
Khamenei said Iran would retaliate if Israel launched such a response.
“If we needed to do that again, we would do it again in the future,” he said.
President Biden on Thursday said the U.S. and Israel were in discussions about the response to Iran’s missile attack, including the possibility they could strike Iranian oil fields.
On Friday, Biden said the Israelis have not decided on any target but that he would press for “other alternatives than striking oil fields.”
Addressing Palestinian and Lebanese supporters at one point Friday, Khamenei lauded Nasrallah and praised its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah for providing “vital service to the entire region and the entire Islamic world.”
He also said Iran-backed militias “will not back down” in their conflict with Israel.
Iran backs a number of armed rebel groups in the Middle East including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the Houthis in Yemen and various other militias in Iraq and Syria. The groups, that have attacked Israel and well as U.S. forces in the region, are known as the “Axis of Resistance.”
Khamenei’s appearance is notable given that he has been in hiding since Nasrallah’s death. Along with the Hezbollah leader, numerous other top officials in Iran-backed groups have been killed in the past month. And in July, Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran, an event blamed on Israel.
Other leaders in Iran’s military branch, known as the Revolutionary Guards, have been killed in Israeli strikes or assassinations.
