LOS ANGELES.–Iran’s 85-year-old feeble Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei threatened the U.S. and Israel at a Students Day celebration at Tehran University where Revolutionary government once shot students protesting the end of the Shah’s regime in 1978. Khamenei said Iran would respond to Israel’s Oct. 26 retaliatory strike to Iran over Iran’s Oct. 1 missile strike, firing some 200 missiles at various sites inside Israel. “The enemies, whether the Zionist regime or the United States of America, will definitely receive a crushing response to what they are doing to Iran and the Iranian nation, and to the resistance front,” Khamenei said in a released video. Khamenei rarely appears in public for fear of assassination by Israel or some domestic group opposed to mullah rule in Iran. Khamenei suppresses nationwide protests due to the brutality of the mulllah regime, attacking its own citizens.
Khamenei’s words carry some weight but are part of the same bravado seen by its 64-year-old now dead Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah who frequently threatened the U.S. and Israel. Nasrallah got careless and was killed by a targeted Israeli air strike Sept. 27 in his Lebanon military headquarters. Iran keeps warning of a regional war but, so far, no other country other than Iran’s funded terrorist groups want any part of Khomenei’s so-called “axis of resistance.” Hezbollah, a division of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, has no ax to grind with Palestinian resistance since Hezbollah are Shiite Muslims with close ties to Iran. Palestinian gripes with Israel started in 1948 when the United Kingdom deeded the British Mandate of Palestine, containing the Holy Land, to Jews in the wake of the Nazi Holocaust. Arab Sunni Muslims living in the Holy Land revolted.
Khamenei backs what he calls the “axis of resistance,” a fraudulent movement to continue militant Arab’s goal, personified in groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, to destroy the Jewish State. But whatever Arab groups continue the goal of conquering Israel, no rational Arab government wants any part of Palestinian ambitions. Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO] founder Yasser Arafat found out the hard way what happens when you wage war against Israel. Arafat worked feverishly since founding the PLO in 1964 for regional war to liberate the Holy Land. When Arafat launched the 1967 Six Day War with six other Arab States, it took only six days for Israel to defeat the militaries of all six governments. Hamas was formed in 1987 by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin to serve as a military wing to threaten Israel into making concessions to the PLO in any future peace talks.
When Hamas attacked Israel Oct. 7, 2023 in the worst atrocity since the Holocaust, killing over 1,200 civilians, taking another 250 hostages, Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip thought they were closer to conquering Israel. In over one year of war, Gaza has been laid to waste and Hamas has been decimated as a military force plotting Israel’s destruction. Oct. 7 mastermind Palestinian Leader 62-year-old Yahya Sinwar was killed in Israeli Defense Forces [IDF] operation Oct. 16, upending Hamas propaganda that it was a force to be reckoned with. After a year of war with Israel, Hamas has been neutralized as a Iranian-funded terror group threatening Israel. Whether they can rebuild in the future is anyone’s guess. But Arab nations around the Mideast, especially oil-rich Gulf Arab states, know they can no longer trust Hamas with any reconstruction funds.
No one knows what Iran’s geriatric Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei gets from funding his “axis of resistance.” Iran has no dog in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, knowing that Sunni Arab groups have no cultural or historic links to Shiite, Farsi-speaking Iran. Iran exploits the Palestinian cause to divert attention away from its brutal regime in Iran, subjugating a population that yearns for human rights in the modern world. Iranians had a taste of those rights living under the more reform-minded Shah of Iran until he was toppled by Islamic radicals in 1978. Khamenei keeps the anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism going to show fraternity to Sunni Arab groups hoping, one day, to eliminate Israel. Iran’s Gen. Mohammed Ali Naini, Revolutionary Guard Spokesman, said a future response “will be wise, powerful and beyond the enemy’s comprehension,” spewing more Iranian hype.
Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is long overdue for retirement but the mullah regime shows no intent of giving up its power. “The blood in our veins is a gift to our leader,!” chanted hijab-covered students at Tehran University commemorating the 1978 massacre of students backing the Shah of Iran. Today, Iran celebrates the 45-year anniversary of the hijacking of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, marking Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei’s Nov. 4, 1979 Islamic Revolution. U.S. officials broke off diplomatic relations while Iran seized 54 hostages and kept them 444 days before releasing them Jan. 20, 1981, the day President Ronald Reagan was sworn in. U.S. officials have never really dealt with Iran’s crimes against the U.S. government, leaving the conflict in Israel’s hands. Time has come for the U.S. to take an active role in settling an old score with Iran.
About the Author
John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.
