DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran’s supreme leader on Saturday threatened Israel and the U.S. with “a crushing response” over attacks on Iran and its allies.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke as Iranian officials are increasingly threatening to launch yet another strike against Israel after its Oct. 26 attack on the Islamic Republic that targeted military bases and other locations and killed at least five people.

Any further attacks from either side could engulf the wider Middle East, already teetering over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip and Israel’s ground invasion of Lebanon, into a wider regional conflict just ahead of the U.S. presidential election this Tuesday.

“The enemies, whether the Zionist regime or the United States of America, will definitely receive a crushing response to what they are doing to Iran and the Iranian nation and to the resistance front,” Khamenei said in video released by Iranian state media.

The supreme leader did not elaborate on the timing of the threatened attack, nor the scope. The U.S. military operates on bases throughout the Middle East, with some troops now manning a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, battery in Israel.

The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier likely is in the Arabian Sea, while Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said Friday that more destroyers, fighter squadrons, tankers and B-52 long-range bombers would be coming to the region to deter Iran and its militant allies.

The 85-year-old Khamenei had struck a more cautious approach in earlier remarks, saying officials would weigh Iran’s response and that Israel’s attack “should not be exaggerated nor downplayed.” Iran has launched two major direct attacks on Israel, in April and October.

But efforts by Iran to downplay the Israeli attack faltered as satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press showed damage to military bases near Tehran linked to the country’s ballistic missile program, as well as at a Revolutionary Guard base used in satellite launches.

Iran’s allies, called the “Axis of Resistance” by Tehran, also have been severely hurt by ongoing Israeli attacks, particularly Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Iran long has used those groups as both an asymmetrical way to attack Israel and as a shield against a direct assault. Some analysts believe those groups want Iran to do more to back them militarily.

Iran, however, has been dealing with its own problems at home, as its economy struggles under the weight of international sanctions and it has faced years of widespread, multiple protests. After Khamenei’s speech, the Iranian rial fell to 691,500 against the dollar, near an all-time low. It had been 32,000 rials to the dollar when Tehran reached its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

Gen. Mohammad Ali Naini, a spokesman for Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard which controls the ballistic missiles needed to target Israel, gave an interview published by the semiofficial Fars news agency just before Khamenei’s remarks were released. In it, he warned Iran’s response “will be wise, powerful and beyond the enemy’s comprehension.”

“The leaders of the Zionist regime should look out from the windows of their bedrooms and protect their criminal pilots within their small territory,” he warned. Israeli air force pilots appear to have used air-launched ballistic missiles in the Oct. 26 attack.

Khamenei on Saturday met with university students to mark Students Day, which commemorates a Nov. 4, 1978, incident in which Iranian soldiers opened fire on students protesting the rule of the shah at Tehran University. The shooting killed and wounded several students and further escalated the tensions consuming Iran at the time that eventually led to the shah fleeing the country and the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The crowd offered a raucous welcome to Khamenei, chanting: “The blood in our veins is a gift to our leader!” Some also made a hand gesture — similar to a “timeout” signal — given by the slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in 2020 in a speech in which he threatened that American troops who arrived in the Mideast standing up would “return in coffins” horizontally.

Iran will mark the 45th anniversary of the U.S. Embassy hostage crisis this Sunday, following the Persian calendar. The Nov. 4, 1979, storming of the embassy by Islamist students led to the 444-day crisis, which cemented the decades-long enmity between Tehran and Washington that persists today.

Israel on Saturday claimed that its forces killed two Hezbollah commanders who were responsible for more than 400 strikes against them in October.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it “eliminated the terrorists Mousa Izz al-Din, the commander of Hezbollah’s forces in the coastal sector, and Hassan Majid Daib, Hezbollah’s artillery commander in the coastal sector” on Friday in the Tyre region of Lebanon.

IDF said Daib was responsible for “the projectile fire toward the Haifa Bay on Thursday.”

“These Hezbollah terrorists were responsible for firing over 400 projectiles at Israel over the last month alone,” the IDF stated.

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The Israel Air Force (IAF) struck more than 120 targets over the last day, including anti-tank missile launching sites, terrorist operatives, terror infrastructure sites, weapons storage facilities and command centers in Lebanon, Israel claimed.

IDF soldiers are continuing to conduct limited, localized, targeted raids against Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon. The troops operated against Hezbollah’s infrastructure in the area, located weapons, and eliminated terrorists in cooperation with the IAF.

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Smoke billows on the Lebanon’s side of the border with Israel on Thursday, Oct. 31. (Reuters/Violeta Santos Moura)

In the Gaza Strip, IDF soldiers continue operational activity in the area of Jabaliya where dozens of terrorists were eliminated in aerial and ground activity. In Rafah and central Gaza, the troops operated to eliminate terrorists, dismantle terror infrastructure, and locate weapons.

Friday’s attack by Israel followed a deadly attack on Thursday from Hezbollah forces in northern Israel.

The first attack was in Metula – a town located along the Israel-Lebanon border – that left an Israeli farmer and four foreign agricultural workers dead. A second reported attack from Hezbollah left two people dead near Haifa.

IDF troops fighting Hezbollah terrorists in southern Lebanon. (IDF Spokesman’s Unit.)

The Wednesday strike that eliminated Mustafa Ahmad Shahadi of Hezbollah’s Radwan Forces was carried out near the city of Nabatieh, south of Beirut, according to the Israel Defense Forces. 

“Mustafa Ahmad Shahadi advanced numerous terror attacks against the State of Israel,” the IDF said in a statement. “His targeting is part of the effort to degrade Hezbollah’s Radwan Forces’ capabilities to direct and execute terror activities against IDF troops and communities in the northern border, in particular the ‘Conquer the Galilee’ plan.” 

Fox News Digital’s Yonat Friling and Greg Norman contributed to this report.

Our guests this week include Tinatin Akhvlediani, a research fellow with CEPS, Iliriana Gjoni, a research analyst with Carnegie Europe and Teona Lavrelashvili, policy expert at the Wilfried Martens Centre. 

The panel reflected on the outcome of parliamentary elections in Georgia that saw the pro-Kremlin Georgian Dream come first. Thousands took to the streets to protest what they said was a rigged vote.

“The country that wants to be an EU candidate should not hold these types of elections”, Teona Lavrelashvili told the panel.

“There was rigging on election day that nobody knows how to prove”, said Titatin Akhvlediani.

Spanish MEP Antonio López-Istúriz White, who was observing the elections with a group of other MEPs, said he was “shocked” to hear the Prime Minister inform him of a plan to ban the opposition after the elections.

“This is something that, as you might understand, for democrats is shocking”, he told Euronews.

Another major talking point in Brussels this week: EU enlargement reports published on Wednesday, a few days after European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s whistle-stop tour of the Western Balkans.

The reviews detail progress in the ten countries waiting to join the EU — and it seems the Commission is unlikely to recommend opening accession talks with Georgia any time soon.

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