Online Desk :  Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said Iran and its regional allies will not back down against Israel and called for unity among Muslim nations as he delivered a rare Friday sermon. Khamenei led prayers at the Imam Khomeini Grand Mosalla mosque in central Tehran in his first public appearance since Iran launched a massive barrage of some 200 ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday, reports Al-Jazeera.

That attack was in retaliation for Israel’s killings of senior Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) figures, including Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and escalating attacks in Lebanon. “The resistance in the region will not back down even with the killing of its leaders,” Khamenei said, calling Iran’s attack on Israel “legal and legitimate”. “The operations were … in return for the heinous crimes committed by this bloodthirsty criminal entity,” he said. He said Iran would fulfil its “duty” to allies in a considered manner.

“We will not act irrationally … not act impulsively”, he said, adding that the country would follow decisions “handed down by our political and military leadership”. It was Iran’s supreme leader’s first such sermon in more than four years, coming just before the first anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, which led to a war that has so far killed more than 41,700 Palestinians and recently spilled over into Lebanon.

Iran’s proxies in its “axis of resistance” – Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthis and armed groups in Iraq – have carried out attacks in the region in support of the Palestinians in the Gaza war. Addressing massive crowds, Khamenei issued a rallying call to Muslim nations –  “from Afghanistan to Yemen, from Iran to Gaza and Lebanon” – saying they should unite against common “enemy” Israel, which he claimed had deployed “psychological”, “economic” and “military” warfare against them. “Our enemy is one,” he said. “If their policies are sowing the seeds of division in one country, they may prevail and once they seize control of one country, they move to the other.”

Khamenei last led Friday prayers after the United States killed revered general Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad in 2020. His speech on Friday was preceded by a commemoration for Nasrallah, killed last week in the southern suburbs of Beirut in an Israeli strike, alongside Abbas Nilforoushan, a general from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.