Iran President Slams US for “Supporting” Israel

Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi said that the United States plays the most important role in helping Israel survive.

“The United States plays the most important role both in helping the survival of the Zionist regime and in arming and supporting it in its massacre of Palestinian women and children,” Raisi said on November 12, Mehr News Agency reported.

Raisi’s comments came while addressing reporters in Tehran upon his return from an extraordinary joint summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the Arab League in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

He also described the United States as the “main culprit in these crimes that are being committed by Israel in Gaza.” He added that since the victory of the Islamic Revolution, Iran has had clear-cut views on the rights of Palestinian people, and considers Israel as a fake and usurping regime with no identity.

Raisi noted that explaining Iran's viewpoints on the issue of Palestine and expounding various aspects of “Zionists’ crimes against humanity as well as war crimes and genocide” in the besieged Gaza Strip were other important goals of his participation in the Riyadh summit.

He also pointed to 10 proposals and solutions that Iran offered at the summit to show the way out of the current crisis in Gaza.

“In this summit, in contrast to the two-state solution that some parties proposed on the future of Palestine, we offered a totally democratic solution based on having all Palestinians, including Muslims, Christians and Jews, vote (through a referendum) to determine their fate,” he said.

Raisi said earlier that the US had impeded the Gaza cease-fire at the UN and blamed it for the lack of consensus at the October 21 Cairo peace summit, and added that the world should see the US "in its true colors".

On October 7, Hamas military wing – the Izz al-Din al-Qassam brigade – announced the start of the Al-Aqsa Flood operation against Israel. Thousands of rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip towards Israel, and armed groups entered Israeli settlements. Meanwhile, the Israeli army started attacks on the Gaza Strip using dozens of fighter jets.

According to the Palestinian health authorities in Hamas-controlled Gaza, the ongoing Israeli strikes killed more than 11,180 people since the start of the war on October 7, including 4,609 minors and 3,100 women. The total number of people injured has reached 28,200, according to the Palestinian authorities.

Meanwhile, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) reported that two more soldiers were killed fighting in the northern Gaza Strip, bringing the death toll in the ground operation against Hamas to 44.

On November 11, the leader of Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah group, Hassan Nasrallah, praised Tehran’s "ongoing and limitless" support, including political, moral, diplomatic, financial and military assistance for "resistance" groups in the region in fighting Israel. He said that the "achievements and victories" of resistance groups in the region were thanks to the Iranian leadership's "brave and decisive" stance, which he said continued despite "all threats".

Hezbollah is the spearhead of a Tehran-backed alliance hostile to Israel and the United States. The group has been exchanging fire with Israeli forces at the Lebanese-Israeli frontier since October 8, but the tit-for-tat shelling has been largely restricted to the border.

Meanwhile, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei praised the Hamas offensive against Israel as a "devastating earthquake", but dismissed that Tehran was involved in the operation.

Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran and Israel have been entangled in a proxy conflict. Tehran reportedly provides military and financial support to Hezbollah, as well as Palestinian organizations like Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Nathan Sales, a counterterrorism expert at the US State Department, stated in November 2018 that Tehran allocates approximately $100 million annually to fund Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups.