In the latest warning made by the Islamic republic since the commencement of the Israel-Hamas conflict, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi stated on Sunday that Israel’s continuous shelling of Gaza “may force everyone” to respond.
Israel has been hammering the tiny Palestinian region since Hamas gunmen burst across the border on October 7 and killed over 1,400 people, the majority of whom were civilians, according to Israeli officials.
According to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, an impoverished sliver of land home to 2.4 million people, over 8,000 people have been murdered since then, with half of them being children.
“The crimes of the Zionist regime have crossed the red lines, and this may force everyone to take action,” Raisi said on X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday.
“Washington asks us to not do anything, but they keep giving widespread support to Israel,” he said.
“The US sent messages to the Axis of Resistance but received a clear response on the battlefield,” he said, using a term often used by Iranian officials to refer to the Islamic republic and its allies like Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Yemen’s Huthis and other Shiite forces in Iraq and Syria.
Although it was not immediately obvious what he was alluding to, since the Gaza battle began, there have been a number of strikes on US forces in Iraq and Syria, as well as increased exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and Israeli forces on the Lebanon border.
The October 7 bombings were hailed as a “success” by Iran, which financially and militarily supports Hamas.
However, it has asserted that it was not involved in the onslaught, which took 230 people prisoner, according to Israeli authorities.
“Iran considers it its duty to support the resistance groups, but … the resistance groups are independent in their opinion, decision, and action,” the Iranian president said in an interview with Al Jazeera on Saturday, according to excerpts released by state news agency IRNA.
“The United States knows very well our current capabilities and knows that they are impossible to overcome,” he said.