Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei met Wednesday with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who visited Tehran as the Palestinian terror organization’s representative at the funeral for Iran’s president Ebrahaim Raisi after he died in a helicopter crash.
“The divine promise to eliminate the Zionist entity will be fulfilled and we will see the day when Palestine will rise from the river to the sea,” Khamenei told Haniyeh during a meeting at his office.
The Hamas politburo chief responded: “God willing we will see that day together.”
The Iranian leader also commented on the anti-Israel protests that pro-Palestinian students are holding on university campuses in the United States and elsewhere.
“Who would have believed that one day, slogans in support of Palestine would be raised in US universities and that the flag of Palestine would be raised there? Who would have believed that one day in Japan in demonstrations in support of Palestine, the slogan ‘Death to Israel’ would be chanted in Persian?” he was quoted as saying by the Tehran Times.
Earlier, Haniyeh joined the funeral procession for Raisi, as did the deputy leader of Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, Naim Qassem. Representatives of Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who like Hamas and Hezbollah are backed by Iran, were also in attendance.
“I am here on behalf of the Palestinian people, in the name of the resistance factions of Gaza… to express our condolences,” Haniyeh told the crowd, who chanted “Death to Israel.”
“I say once again… we are sure that the Islamic Republic of Iran will continue its support for the Palestinian people,” he added.
God's promise to free #Palestine from the river to the sea will be realized pic.twitter.com/cRbUAStK0q
— Khamenei Media (@Khamenei_m) May 22, 2024
Haniyeh was also among the representatives of armed groups who attended prayers led by Khamenei over the coffins of Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and six others who died in the crash on Sunday.
Haniyeh recounted Raisi telling him this year that Hamas’s October 7 onslaught against Israel, which sparked the ongoing war in Gaza, was an “earthquake in the heart of the Zionist entity.”
Iran, which does not recognize Israel and whose leaders have openly called for its destruction, has been a vocal supporter of the Hamas-led atrocities, with Khamenei saying three days after the devastating attack that Israel “cannot recover from the defeat of October 7.”
Source » timesofisrael