Khamenei Warns Arab States Against Normalizing Ties With Israel
Israel is on the defensive and the United States has suffered major setbacks, Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said on Quds day, the last Friday of Ramadan.
Israel is on the defensive and the United States has suffered major setbacks, Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said on Quds day, the last Friday of Ramadan.
Khamenei in televized remarks claimed that "everything is signalling a new equation in Palestine’s present and future," as the Israeli army "has been forced to turn its aggressive formation into a defensive one."
However, he did not explain the reasons for his perception of a change in the region. Khamenei also tried to portray the United States as "the most important supporter of Israel," finding itself in a weak state.
"The United States of America, has suffered consecutive defeats in the war in Afghanistan, in its maximum pressure policy against Iran, in trying to control the economy of the world, in the internal management of its own affairs and the deep rift that has developed in the US establishment." He also said that America has been defeated by "Asian powers," probably meaning China and North Korea.
Meanwhile, the 83-year-old cleric claimed that opinion "polls show almost 70% of Palestinians in the 1948 and 1967 borders and in the surrounding camps (Lebanon, Syria) encourage their leaders to carry out attacks on Israel." He did not mention the source of the poll in question.
Referring to recent sporadic unrest in Jerusalem, Khamenei also claimed that moves by "Palestinian youth, and the military manoeuvres in Gaza indicate that all of Palestine has turned into an arena of resistance."
Khamenei's uncompromising remarks came as nuclear talks with the US have come to a standstill because of the destablizing role of the Revolutionary Guard in the region.
He further claimed that "the Zionist regime is out of breath," and that "the formation of the resistance in West Asia has been the most blessed phenomenon in this region in recent decades."
The Islamic Republic calls its campaign against Israel the ‘resistance’, including militant forces it supports in the region.
While renewing his support for jihadists in Palestinian territories, Khamenei condemned regional countries for normalizing their ties with Israel. He said: "The Islamic Republic supports the resistance camp. It advocates and supports the Palestinian Resistance. We have always said this, we have always acted on this, and we have stood by it."
Khamenei added: "We condemn the treacherous move to normalize relations with Israel. We condemn the policy of a normalization of relations." He further charged that those Arab states which have normalized ties with Israel "have behaved treacherously and have brought disgrace to the Arab world."
Meanwhile several military commanders and politicians boasted about Iran's power and condemned regional countries for trying to normalize relations with Israel. IRGC Commander Hossein Salami in a televised message to Palestinians that was broadcast on Iran's Arabic speaking Al-Alam TV once again promised that "Israel will soon be wiped off the map."
In another development, IRGC Intelligence Chief Hosein Taeb said that the Islamic Republic has empowered its forces to launch intelligence offensives against Israel.
President Ebrahim Raisi in speech delivered in Tehran warned the regional Arab states who have normalized their ties with Israel that "Normalization of relations with Israel is tantamount to nurturing a snake up your sleeve."
The Speaker of the Iranian Parliament (Majles) Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said during a meeting with senior Hamas officials in Tehran that "resistance groups should make normalization of ties with Israel costly for Muslim countries."
Tasnim news website affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard said that the new "Kheybar Shekan" solid-fuel missile with a range of close to 1,500 kilometers was displayed for the second time this month.
The word Kheybar refers to an attack by early Muslims in 628 AD led by Prophet Muhammad on Jews living in Khaybar (Arabic pronunciation of Kheybar). The word Shekan means destoryer and Kheybar Shekan means "destroyer of Kheybar".
The ballistic missile Emad, with a range of 1,700 km was also paraded, as anti-Israeli banners installed by state organs covered major streets in Tehran and other cities.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards commander Hossein Salami said on Friday that Israel was creating conditions for its own destruction with its "evil actions".
"Stop your vicious deeds. You know well that we are people of action and reaction. Our responses are painful. You create conditions for your own destruction. We will not leave you alone. Wait [for us]," Salami said during Quds Day in Tehran.
"You know better than us what will befall you if you take evil action."
The Revolutionary Guard Intelligence Organzation chief Hossein Taeb, a cleric, referring to "resistence forces" and Palestinians said that "Quds…God willing, will be freed soon" and Iran knows that Israel is in fear. Zionists, he said, have reached "the edge of the abys."
Messagaes in similar state-organized events are also directed at the supporters of the régime and feed the coverage in media controlled by the government.
Taeb also said that the "supporter of the occupyer of Quds, Ameirca is not in a good state. The arrogant and dominating power of America is declining," he said, and added that American leaders are lost amid numerous domestic and foreign challenges. They cannot free themselves from the humiliating situation they face in West Asia, and other foreign powers who might want to fill America’s shoes should learn the leasson, Taeb said.
The head of IRGC intelligence went on to say that "We will not také away our gaze from the enemy," and will watch their every move.
The commander of IRGC’s extraterritoral Quds Force, Esmail Ghaani also told the crowd at he Tehran Friday Prayer that the founder of the Islamic Republic Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini always supported the Palestinians and the Islamic Republic in its four-decade history tried to follow his teachings to "liberate Palestine."
He then praised the Lebanese Hezbollah, created in the early 1980s with planning and support by Iran’s nascent régime. Ghaani warned that "children of the Islamic Republic are present all over the world," and have organized "resistence fronts" everywhere.
Tehran calls all militant forces and groups that follow its policies and receive support the "resistence front."
A group of residents of the village of Saravan in Iran’s northern Gilan province started a peaceful protest on Thursday, but after police intervention, protesters began throwing stones. Five officers were injured and several protesters arrested.
According to videos circulating inthe socialmedia police used guns and teargas during the clashes.
Furious at the failure of the local authorities to close the gigantic waste landfill, people had been blocking the entrance of the garbage dump for more than two weeks to stop trash trucks from reaching the site.
Piles of stinking rubbish at the Saravan site now tower some 90 meters (295 feet) high, and according to estimates the volume of the waste exceeds one million tons while about a thousand tons is added to it daily.
Waste from the provincial capital Rasht and seven other cities has been dumped there for nearly four decades.
Protesters say the landfill, reportedly due to close next year, is causing diseases and health problems, and demand the site be closed immediately.
According to reports, officials have been promising to solve this problem for years but none of their pledges have been fulfilled so far.
The spokesman for Gilan province's waste management office, Javad Shafi'i, told the state broadcaster that some $4 million had been allocated to resolve the issue, including funding a "fertilizer and incinerator plant".
A report by Tehran Times newspaper said that poor waste management is causing environmental damage of around $1.7 billion annually.
Recently, Iran has seen several demonstrations over government mismanagement of environmental issues like the country's water crisis or building factories in natural heritage sites.
Earlier in April, a group of residents held a protest rally in southwest Iran against a project to transfer water out of Chaharmahal-Bakhtiari province, causing water scarcity in their region.
During the protest in the provincial capital of Shahrekord, people carried placards and chanted slogans threatening to take up arms against the ‘mafia’ behind the redistribution project.
Chaharmahal-Bakhtiari, a traditionally water-rich region in the Zagros mountains, has seen its water resources decline due to both drought and projects to irrigate other arid regions.
Iran has been suffering from drought for at least a decade and this year officials have been warning of a further decrease in precipitation.
Moreover, controversy over an environmentally dangerous petrochemical project continues in Iran as some government officials have defended it despite an earlier ban.
The petrochemical plant in Miankaleh, northern Iran is planned to be built next to a nature reserve, which galvanized opposition by activists and citizens in the past few weeks. President Ebrahim Raisi came out against the project earlier this month and Iran’s Judiciary issued an order to stop construction until further studies.
However, the governor of Mazandaran province and the Friday Prayer Imam of the region strongly defended the project. The government of former president Hassan Rouhani in an apparently hasty move approved the petrochemical project last year and it obtained the oil ministry’s permission in an unusually fast-tracked manner.