A handout picture provided by the Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's office shows him delivering the sermon for the Friday prayer ceremony in Tehran on October 4, 2024. AFP
The supreme leader of the Farsi-speaking country delivered the remarks in Arabic during a rare Friday sermon, commemorating the late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli strike on 27 September, along with an Iranian Revolutionary Guards general.
"Every strike against the Israeli enemy benefits the entire region, and Israel will not survive," Khamenei said addressing tens of thousands at a mosque.
He added that Tehran-aligned groups "will not back down" even after a spate of Israeli killings of their leaders.
"The enemy of Iran is the enemy of Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Yemen, and Iraq. The enemy is the same and works everywhere with a special method, but the control room is the same," he stated.
"The resistance in the region will not back down with these martyrdoms, and will win," he said, asserting that Israel is pretending to win through assassinations and civilian killings.
"The 7 October attack was a legitimate act, so was Iran's attack on Israel," he said, referring to the Palestinian group Hamas's offensive against Israel in October.
"Every country has the right to defend itself from aggressors," he said, urging Muslim nations to "strap the belt of defence" from Afghanistan to Yemen, from Iran to Gaza and Lebanon.
Since October, Israel has been carrying out a deadly assault on Gaza that killed tens of thousands and reduced the Gaza Strip to rubble. Recently, Israel has shifted the focus of its war towards Lebanon.
Israel's bombing in Lebanon has killed more than 1,000 people since the start of the escalation on 23 September, according to the Lebanese health ministry, and forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes in a country already mired in economic crisis.
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