Top Iranian Commander Says Al-Aqsa Mosque To Be Liberated Soon
As the international community continues to denounce the recent Hamas invasion of Israel, Iranian officials are openly encouraging Palestinians to escalate their efforts.
As the international community continues to denounce the recent Hamas invasion of Israel, Iranian officials are openly encouraging Palestinians to escalate their efforts.
Mohammad Baqeri, the chairman of the chiefs of staff of the Iranian armed forces claimed it would not be long before Palestinian youth succeeded in liberating the Al-Aqsa Mosque from what he referred to as "the Zionist enemy."
He slammed the ongoing normalization attempts between Israel and Arab nations as a "plot" to prevent the collapse of the Jewish state, saying it “could neither halt nor delay the inevitable decline of Israel".
Iranian authorities have consistently criticized Saudi Arabia's efforts to establish relations with Israel, viewing such initiatives as detrimental to Palestinians.
Baqeri, in his message, also praised the efforts of Palestinian groups in their operations against “the Zionist armed forces in the occupied territories.”
Tehran has long provided support to militant Palestinian groups, including Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, both of which carried out the recent attacks against Israel and its civilians, resulting in the deaths and injuries of hundreds. The groups are part of Iran's extensive network of proxy forces that span the region from Iraq to Lebanon and Yemen. Tehran openly acknowledges providing financial and military assistance to the proxies.
In a rare statement supporting the retaliatory action, Biden said Israel had the US’s unequivocal support. He said: “Let me say this as clearly as I can: This is not a moment for any party hostile to Israel to exploit these attacks to seek advantage,” in a veiled message to the regime.
Meanwhile talks are underway for the US to provide military support. Biden’s statements come as Tehran has been emboldened by a hostage deal which saw five US-Iranian citizens freed in exchange for the release of $6bn of frozen Iranian funds from South Korea. In addition, the US Biden administration agreed in June to release another $2.7 blocked in Iran.
Since Saturday morning, Hamas has sent thousands of rockets across the border into Israel with hundreds dead, hundreds more wounded and dozens of Israeli civilians and soldiers taken hostage, dead and alive into Gaza, including women, elderly and children.
The US made clear its support for Israel with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin making a public statement seen as a warning to the regime that the US will not stand by as Iran continues to arm its proxies.
“Over the coming days the Department of Defense will work to ensure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself and protect civilians from indiscriminate violence and terrorism,” he said.
One of the Hamas spokespeople, Ghazi Hamad, told the BBC that the group had direct backing for the attack from Iran. Attacks were also seen across Israel’s northern border from Iran’s Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah.
Tehran has been bolstering unity between its proxies on Israel’s borders, in recent months. Just last week, another Hamas commander, Osama Hamdan, had been in Tehran while the leaders of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine met with foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in what was said to be a meeting to consolidate the various factions.
At last week’s International Conference Of Islamic Unity held in Iran, several of its proxies used the arena as a stage to call on unity against the region’s growing warm ties with Israel.
In 2020, the US-brokered Abraham Accords saw countries including Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates form official diplomatic ties and in recent weeks, relations with Saudi Arabia and Israel are growing ever closer, according the the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman.
Hamdan went as far as to say that normalization is the biggest threat to the Palestinian people, calling for all to “stand and resist”, reiterating the group’s “condemnation” of nations normalizing ties with the Jewish state.
Meetings involving the Palestinian factions and the factions of Israel’s neighbors also took place last week, in Damascus and Beirut, alongside Hamas and the PIJ, mediated by the foreign minister on a regional tour believed to be cementing Iran’s policy across its proxies across Israel’s borders.
Former Iran envoy, Gabriel Noronha, called out a US official who claimed it was “too early” to say if Iran was behind the attacks on Israel, in spite of Hamas admissions that it was regime-backed.
Noronha wrote on X: “This not only contradicts Hamas' spokesperson's on-record confirmation, it ignores three decades of evidence,” including Yasser Arafat claiming in 1992 that Iran had provided $30 million to Hamas and in 1995, Clinton's CIA Director James Woolsey told Congress Iran had provided Hamas with $100 million.
Other criticism has been raining on the Biden administration. “None of what is happening in the Middle East today had to happen. The US since 2021 has allowed the Iranian regime to run riot and the Iranians have deliberately set the region on fire,” said Joel Rayburn, founder and director of the American Center for Levant Studies.
“This is the absolutely predictable consequence of wilful American negligence and weakness,” he said on X.
Overnight, Israel began its retaliatory attacks on targets in Gaza including infrastructure, tunnels and buildings belonging to Hamas. Hundreds of deaths were mounting on both sides.
According to Israeli media, more than 350 Israelis are feared dead, 1864 wounded and dozens more hostage in Gaza. So far the IDF has named 26 soldiers killed with the list being updated all day as families are informed.
According to the Palestine Ministry of Health, 313 have been killed following Israeli airstrikes and 2,000 wounded in Gaza.
