TEHRAN, Oct 4: Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Friday that Iran and its regional allies will not back down, after an Israeli attack on Beirut that is thought to have targeted the heir apparent to the assassinated leader of Tehran-backed Hezbollah.
Iran raised the stakes when it fired missiles at Israel on Tuesday, partly in retaliation for Israel's killing of Hezbollah secretary general Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, a towering figure who turned the group into a powerful armed and political force with reach across the Middle East.
Israel has vowed to respond and oil prices have risen on the prospect of a possible attack on Iran's oil facilities.
"The resistance in the region will not back down even with the killing of its leaders," Khamenei said in a rare appearance leading Friday prayers in Tehran, mentioning Nasrallah in his speech and calling its attack on Israel legal and legitimate.
Iran will not "procrastinate nor act hastily to carry out its duty" in confronting Israel, he said, without issuing a direct threat to Israel or the United States but grasping the barrel of a rifle that stood to his left.
The semi-official Iranian news agency SNN quoted Revolutionary Guards deputy commander Ali Fadavi as saying on Friday that if Israel attacks, Tehran would target Israeli energy and gas installations.
Iran's escalating rhetoric comes as the fate of Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine, rumoured to be Nasrallah's successor, remains unknown. Axios reporter Barak Ravid cited three Israeli officials as saying that Safieddine had been targeted in an underground bunker in Beirut overnight but that his fate was not clear.
Israel's military declined comment and Hezbollah made no comment on Safieddine's fate. His brother Sayyed Abdallah Safieddine, who is Hezbollah's representative to Iran, attended Khamenei's speech in Tehran.
Israeli strikes have increasingly targeted medical facilities and aid workers in recent days. A strike late on Wednesday hit a building in central Beirut used by Hezbollah-affiliated rescue workers, killing nine, the Lebanese health ministry said.
On Friday, an Israeli strike on Beirut's southern suburbs killed a rescuer from the same unit and another on the southern Lebanese town of Marjayoun hit near its main hospital. Medical staff have decided to temporarily evacuate, the hospital director Mounes Klakesh told Reuters.
Israel accuses the militants of hiding among civilians, which Hezbollah denies.
In the group's stronghold in Beirut's southern suburbs, many buildings have been reduced to rubble by a week of intensive strikes on the area. Along a main market street, known as Moawad Souk, nearly all the storefronts had been damaged and the street was filled with broken glass.
"We're alive but don't know for how long," said Nouhad Chaib, a 40-year-old man already displaced from the south.
Israeli air strikes had pummelled the district hours before Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi met with top Lebanese officials in Beirut, including caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and speaker of parliament Nabih Berri - a Hezbollah ally.
Iran's most senior diplomat also said his presence in Beirut "in these difficult circumstances" was the best evidence that Iran stood by Lebanon and supported the Shi'ites.
Araqchi said Tehran supported efforts for a ceasefire in Lebanon on the condition it would be backed by Hezbollah and simultaneous with a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
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. Khamenei said Afghanistan should join the "defence".
Israel has assassinated leaders and commanders of Hezbollah and Hamas, the Palestinian militant group it has been seeking to wipe out in Gaza since its attack on Israel a year ago.
Khamenei said such actions were counterproductive.
"Every strike launched by any group against Israel is a service to the region and to all humanity."
Israel's military said on Friday that it had eliminated the head of Hezbollah's communication networks, Mohammad Rashid Sakafi, by conducting a "precise, intelligence-based strike" in Beirut on Thursday. Hezbollah made no comment on Sakafi. —REUTERS
