Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Wednesday marked the fifth anniversary of the assassination of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force commander Lt. Gen. Qassem Soleimani by meeting with Hezbollah terrorists wounded in Israel’s Sept. 17-18 pager attacks.
According to Tehran’s official IRNA agency, the visiting delegation also included relatives of Hezbollah “martyrs” killed fighting the Jewish state.
Pictures of the event showed some of the Hezbollah terrorists wearing sunglasses. Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah’s pagers and radios put at least 1,500 terrorists out of commission, with many blinded or losing hands.
מנהיג איראן ח'אמנאי נפגש עם מחבלי חיזבאללה, שנפגעו במתקפת הביפרים, ועם בני משפחות של מחבלי חיזבאללה שנהרגו בלחימה עם ישראל@asafroz15 pic.twitter.com/RaeFGXODIz
— החדשות – N12 (@N12News) January 1, 2025
“Martyr Soleimani’s constant strategy was to revive the resistance front,” Khamenei was quoted as saying, referring to Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Houthis and other Iranian-backed terrorist organizations.
Soleimani, widely considered the architect of the Iran’s global sponsorship of terror, was killed in a U.S. drone strike on Jan. 3, 2020, near Baghdad International Airport.
The Israel Defense Forces has devastated Hezbollah, Iran’s terrorist army in Lebanon, in several operations, including the Sept. 17-18 pager attacks, after the group began cross-border attacks on Israel a day after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, near Gaza.
On Sept. 27, Israel dropped at least a dozen 2,000-pound bunker-buster bombs on a Hezbollah headquarters in Beirut, killing the organization’s leader Hassan Nasrallah.
“Know that those who are running wild today will one day be trampled under the feet of believers,” Khamenei warned on Wednesday, adding that U.S. army bases in Syria would soon be “trampled,” IRNA reported.
“If a nation removes its pillars of stability and strength from the field, it risks becoming like Syria—vulnerable to occupation by the United States, Israel and some regional states,” according to Khamenei.
The Islamic Republic’s supreme leader described Lebanon and Yemen as symbols of resistance, promising that its proxies in these countries would emerge victorious over the militaries of the U.S. and Israel.
Earlier this week, Iranian Supreme National Security Council secretary Ali Akbar Ahmadian vowed that a new group would emerge in Syria to fight the Jewish state following the fall of the regime of Bashar Assad.
“With the occupation of Syrian territories by the Zionist regime, a new resistance has been born that will manifest itself in the years to come,” Ahmadian declared following a meeting with Oman’s foreign minister.
Ahmadian claimed that Tehran’s regional influence had “not weakened” following the Dec. 8 removal of the Assad regime by a coalition of rebel groups led by the Sunni Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham organization.
