In Tehran, the commander of the Islamic Republic of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) stated that the war between Israel and the Palestinians is not only in the Gaza Strip but has expanded to the West Bank, according to an interview with a regime-tied news outlet. The commander's words come as the Islamic Republic of Iran's Palestinian terrorist proxy, Islamic Jihad, has continued launching rockets into Israel in response to the Israeli government's operation against top Islamic Jihad officials.
According to reports, in the interview with the official website of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, IRGC Major General Hossein Salami declared that the attacks ignited in the “occupied terrorists” will never go away and continue to occur in all Palestinian territories. Salami then threatened that Israelis have no haven in what he described as "occupied Palestine" and argued that the Palestinian resistance movements' firepower is strong enough to destroy Israel.
He then praised the most recent attacks by Islamic Jihad against Israelis, claiming that numerous Israeli civilians and military units died in operations by Islamic resistance militias in Gaza and the West Bank over the past several months, with significantly higher deaths than in 2021. The commander praised the efforts of the IRGC and their role in providing up-to-date weaponry and training Palestinian terrorist fighters against Israeli soldiers. He also stated that with the addition of the Shiite Islamic terrorist group Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon, the rockets launched against Israel will continue to come from the North and Western parts of the Gaza Strip.
The IRGC official stated that while missiles and rockets were great for deterrence and inflicting heavy casualties or static wars, these attacks will not "liberate" the land from Israel and require infantry units to move in and attack step by step.
The open hostilities between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Israel have continued to escalate in the past few months, with numerous Iranian military officials and nuclear scientists mysteriously dying. In late May, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett declared that Iran would not go unpunished for its instigation of attacks through its proxies, arguing for a harsher approach toward top and low-level Islamic government officials and terrorist groups.
In early August, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched Operation Breaking Dawn against the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip, killing several top leaders like military commander Tayseer Jabari. The attack occurred over several days, with Israeli forces successfully targeting Islamic Jihad leaders in the Gaza Strip, believed to be well-hidden from such attacks. Islamic Jihad responded to such attacks by launching rockets from Gaza into Israeli civilian territory, resulting in the deaths of Palestinians from failed rocket launches.
In response to the attack, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei praised the Islamic Jihad and Hamas for uniting against Israel and displaying the "integrity of the Palestinian nation's jihad." The IRGC then reiterated its support for the terrorist group's attack, calling on Islamic followers in Lebanon and the West Bank to join the attack against what they described as the "Zionist regime." Since its inception in the late 1980s, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and its counterpart, Hamas, have received enormous financial and military support from Iran’s regime for their efforts to wipe out Israel from the map.
Currently, Iran and the West are engaged in ongoing negotiations to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement created under the Obama Administration, which will allow give Tehran new funds which many believe will go support its terrorist proxies against Israel and American allies in the Middle East.
