Alert – Revealed: Iran’s dictator Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made chilling warning to Israel just four days before its proxy Hamas slaughtered 1,400 civilians

Iran’s dictator made a chilling warning to Israel that ‘the Zionist regime is dying’ just four days before its proxy Hamas slaughtered 1,400 civilians, it has emerged.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei took to social media on October 3 to warn that the ‘anti-occupation movement in Palestine’ was more ready than it had been in decades to ‘achieve its goals’.

Hamas then unleashed its ‘surprise’ terror attack on Israel just four days later on October 7, which killed 1,400 and saw more than 200 people taken captive. In response, Israel began bombarding the Palestinian enclave. The Gaza Health Ministry said the death toll among Palestinians has passed 8,000, mostly women and minors. 

It comes as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli government are facing domestic pressure to secure the release of some 230 hostages seized when Hamas fighters from Gaza breached Israel’s defences and stormed into nearby towns.

Hamas says it is ready to release all hostages if Israel releases all of the thousands of Palestinians held in its prisons. But Israel has dismissed the Hamas offer with Netanyahu having said yesterday that the expanding ground operation ‘will help us in this mission’ to bring back all the hostages.

Meanwhile, the head of Lebanon’s Hezbollah last week met with top leaders of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad to assess what their alliance must do to ‘achieve a real victory for the resistance’ in Gaza.

Khamenei in a post on X, formerly Twitter, on October 3, warned: ‘The Zionist regime is dying.’

On October 7, he added: ‘Today, the Palestinian youth and the Palestinian movement is more energetic, more alive, and more prepared than it has ever been during the last 80 years.

‘God willing, the cancer of the usurper Zionist regime will be eradicated at the hands of the Palestinian people and the Resistance forces throughout the region.’ 

Iran has denied playing a role in the October 7 massacre, however US intelligence reports have shown that Iran likely knew that Hamas was planning ‘operations against Israel’.

The reports do claim that some Iranian leaders were surprised by the attack, which was the deadliest day of Israel’s 75-year history. 

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian today said Iran does not want war to ‘spread out’ and dismissed claims directly connecting Iran to the attacks, calling them ‘baseless’.

‘We don’t want this war to spread out,’ he said during an appearance on CNN.

‘We always had political media and international support for Palestine. We have never denied this,’ he said.

‘This is the truth, but in relation to this operation called the Al Aqsa Storm, there was no connection to that data between Iran and this Hamas operation, not my government nor part of my country.’

Since the massacre, Israel has bombarded the Gaza Strip with air strikes and begun ground operations with the aim of destroying the Iran-backed Islamist group Hamas and returning more than 200 people abducted to Gaza from Israel.

US and coalition troops have been attacked at least 19 times in Iraq and in Syria by Iran-backed forces in the past week.

Amirabdollahian said linking Iran to any attack in the region, if US interests are targeted, without providing proof, is ‘totally wrong.’

People in the region were angry, he said, and ‘they are not receiving orders from us. They act according to their own interest. Also, what happened, what was carried out by Hamas, it was totally Palestinian.’

The United States told the United Nations on Tuesday it does not seek conflict with Iran, but Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that Washington would act swiftly and decisively if Iran or its proxies attack US personnel anywhere.

The Pentagon said on Thursday that the US military carried out strikes on two places storing weapons and munitions in eastern Syria used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and groups it supports. 

It comes as Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Lebanon’s Hezbollah, on Wednesday sat down with Hamas deputy chief Saleh al-Arouri and Islamic Jihad chief Ziad al-Nakhala at an undisclosed location. 

Pictures released by Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV showed Nasrallah sitting in a plush wingback chair with the PIJ and Hamas chiefs reclining opposite him on a long sofa. 

All three were surveyed by imposing portraits of Iran’s former and current Supreme Leaders, Ruhollah Khomeini and Ali Khamenei, whose Islamic Republic is the chief backer of all three militant groups.  

‘The meeting… assessed the positions taken internationally and what the Axis of Resistance must do’, a report by al-Manar said.

Their meeting has adding to fears that the bitter conflict between Israel and Hamas could trigger the spread of war across the Middle East. 

Experts have warned the region is teetering on the edge of a ‘deep and dangerous abyss’ as the spectre of war looms large.

Tor Wennesland, the UN’s Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, said any escalation of violence may instantly alter the trajectory of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the worse and drag the entire Middle East with it. 

‘The events of the past days have served to reignite grievances and reanimate alliances across the region,’ he told the UN Security Council last week.

‘The risk of an expansion of this conflict is very, very real and extremely dangerous.’

And Jon Alterman, a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, underscored the gravity of the situation, arguing that the complex regional dynamics mean the conflict could spiral out of control at a moment’s notice.

‘If this starts going bad, it could go bad in a lot of places simultaneously and very quickly. We are absolutely heading into a big unknown,’ he told the Washington Post. 

In the wake of Hamas’ ruthless surprise attack on Israel on October 7, which claimed the lives of 1400 people, Israel responded with full fury, launching an incessant bombing campaign in the Gaza Strip that in turn has killed thousands of Palestinians.

More than two weeks on from the atrocities, Israel’s Defence Forces (IDF) have massed tens of thousands of troops, tanks and heavy armour along the border with Gaza ahead of what threatens to be a full-scale ground assault on the Palestinian enclave. 

To Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, Israeli units have engaged with militants from Iran-backed Hezbollah, who have also fired rockets at Israel’s cities.

And now in Yemen, Houthi rebels have begun firing rockets of their own, last week forcing a US warship to blast the missiles out of the sky.

Now, a boots-on-the-ground invasion of Gaza looks imminent.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant last week urged his men to ‘be ready’ to move in, adding: ‘Whoever sees Gaza from afar now, will see it from the inside… It might take a week, a month, two months until we destroy them,’ he added, referring to Hamas.

Such an operation is sure to be extremely bloody, with leading military and defence analyst and RUSI Associate Fellow Sam Cranny-Evans, likening the potential conflict to scenes from the most bitter urban fighting amid the Iraq war.

‘The tactics employed by the IDF will depend in part on the tactics used by al-Qassam (Hamas armed wing). 

‘It is likely that drones will be used to drop bombs on Israeli forces, and that improvised explosive devices (IEDs) will be deployed to slow them down. The IDF has experienced these technologies, but they do have the ability to inflict serious casualties,’ he said.

But other analysts said a greater threat to Israel would come from elsewhere.  

Firas Maksad, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in the US, emphasised the potential consequences of a full-scale war with Lebanon, noting that it would turn Gaza ‘into a sideshow.’ 

Maksad warned that Hezbollah’s military capabilities far exceed those of Hamas, meaning Israeli forces would be in for a bitter fight to the north should the Lebanese based group choose to launch a full-scale attack.

In a recent analysis of the conflict in the Foreign Affairs journal, Senior Fellow at UCLA’s International Relations department Dalia Dassa Kaye wrote: ‘Missile barrages from Hezbollah could more easily overwhelm Israel’s missile defenses than even the most potent strikes from Hamas.’

The spectre of such a conflict brings with it the prospect of unprecedented levels of destruction and bloodshed which could far surpass all previous wars in Israel’s history.

Maksad’s concern comes as Hamas’ top representative in Lebanon, Ahmed Abdul-Hadi, told POLITICO that Hezbollah will not stand for an Israeli ground attack on Gaza.

‘Hezbollah will pay no attention to threats from anyone against it entering the war; it will ignore warnings to stay out of it. The timing of when Hezbollah wants to enter the war or not will relate to Israeli escalation and incidents on the ground, and especially if Israel tries to enter Gaza on the ground,’ he said.

Tensions with Iran add another layer of complexity to the already volatile situation.

The Islamic Republic, led by Khamenei and his hardline President Ebrahim Raisi, has long been opposed to Israel’s existence, viewing it as illegitimate. 

Israel, in turn, perceives Iran as a security threat due to its support for groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, and its nuclear ambitions.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian travelled to Saudi Arabia last week – a remarkable show of unity between two former sworn enemies, particularly given that Israel and the Kingdom were working towards normalising their relations.  

While there, Amir-Abdollahian issued an ominous message to Israel: ‘After the terrible crime of the Zionist regime in the bombing and massacre of more than a thousand innocent women and children in the hospital, the time has come for the global unity of humanity against this fake regime more hated than ISIS and its killing machine. Time is OVER.’ 

Other parties have attempted to quell the tensions, with US President Joe Biden declaring there was ‘no clear evidence’ that Iran helped Hamas plan its October  attacks, despite being the Palestinian group’s main financial backer.  

Dassa Kaye remains hopeful that interested parties could help mediate tensions between Israel and Iran, arguing that the Biden administration is ‘reaching out to Iran with the help of regional partners… to avoid miscalculation and unwanted military escalation.’

But she added a stark warning for what may happen with respect to Iran if the violence in Israel and Gaza cannot be contained. 

‘More skirmishes between Israel and Iran, not to mention a full-scale war, could destabilise the region, disrupt global markets, cause massive harm to civilians, draw in US forces, and perhaps even prompt Iran to weaponise its nuclear capabilities.’