Iran’s supreme leader defends missile attack on Israel

In a rare appearance at Friday prayers, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the country and its regional proxies will not back down against Israel, hours after an Israeli attack on Beirut thought to have targeted the heir apparent to Tehran-backed Hezbollah's slain secretary general.

Khamenei’s appearance at a mosque in Tehran was his first Friday prayer sermon in more than four years, and his first major public appearance since Iran launched a barrage of missiles at Israel Tuesday.

Khamenei addressed a massive crowd outside the Grand Mosalla mosque, where many were seen waving Palestinian, Hezbollah and Lebanese flags. He defended Iran’s Tuesday missile attack on Israel, calling it legal and legitimate and the least that Israel’s “criminal regime” could expect.

He went on to defend the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel by U.S.-designated terror group Hamas that sparked the war in Gaza and subsequent conflict in Lebanon.

“The storming of al-Aqsa that took place last year around the same time was a correct, logical, international legal move, and the Palestinians were right," the supreme leader said.

Hamas triggered the conflict with its attack last October on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people and led to the capture of 250 hostages. Israel’s counteroffensive in Gaza has killed more than 41,200 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, a death toll Israel says includes thousands of militant fighters.

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, was in Beirut Friday for meetings with Lebanese officials. At a news conference following those meetings, Araghchi said Iran does not intend to continue the missile attacks on Israel but would “respond tougher.”

“Our response will be proportionate and fully calculated,” he said.

But Araghchi also said Iran would support a cease-fire in Lebanon, as long as it was accepted by the Lebanese people and Hezbollah and if it was simultaneous with a cease-fire in Gaza.

New Israeli airstrikes

Also on Friday, Israel carried out a series of airstrikes in southern Lebanon, including a strike on the Masnaa border crossing on the main highway linking Lebanon and Syria. The Lebanese government said more than 300,000 people fleeing the conflict in Lebanon have crossed into Syria.

Video and pictures taken at the scene show a crater in the highway, roughly 12 meters in diameter, making the road impassable.

At a Geneva news conference Friday, a spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency, Rula Amin, said the strike closed the route to vehicles and effectively put a halt to traffic there. Amin said the Lebanese government estimates up to 1 million people have fled to places within Lebanon to escape the fighting.

She said most of the nearly 900 government-established collective shelters in Lebanon are full.

In a post on its X social media account, the Israel Defense Forces – IDF – said the crossing was used to transfer weapons to Hezbollah from Iran via Syria.

The IDF also said Friday that since Israel’s ground operation began Monday in southern Lebanon, “250 Hezbollah terrorists, including 20 leaders” have been eliminated by land and air, and more than 2,000 military targets have been attacked, including “terrorist elements and facilities,” military buildings, weapons depots and missile platforms.

On Thursday, the Palestinian health ministry reported at least 18 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli strike on the Tulkarm refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. Witnesses report the strike hit a building that housed a popular cafe.

The Israeli military said in a statement it killed Hamas leader Zahi Yaser Abd al-Razeq Oufi, whom it accused of participating in numerous attacks.

Separately, the IDF reported that two Israeli soldiers were killed, and several others were injured in a drone attack from Iraq along the northern Israel border.

Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.