TEHRAN: Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei praised the country’s armed forces for their “success” in his first public comments since Tehran launched an unprecedented direct attack on Israel last week.
In a meeting with Iranian military commanders on Sunday, Khamenei praised the armed forces for their “success in recent events,” a week after the country’s first-ever direct attack on Israel from its own territory.
“The armed forces showed a good image of their abilities and power and an admirable image of the Iranian nation,” Khamenei said. “They also proved the emergence of the power of the Iranian nation’s determination at the international level.”
The remarks from Iran’s supreme leader are the first since Iran attacked Israel and since a reported Israeli attack on a military air base in central Isfahan province on Friday.
“The armed forces’ recent achievements have created a sense of splendour and magnificence about Islamic Iran in the eyes of the world,” Khamenei said in quotes posted on his official X account.
The Friday strike, which Khamenei did not mention, was a presumed response to Iran’s unprecedented drone and missile attack on Israel which was itself a retaliation for an airstrike on the Iranian consular building in Damascus.
That attack, widely blamed on Israel, levelled the consular annex of the Iranian embassy and killed seven members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, including two generals.
Israel said it intercepted 99 percent of the more than 300 drones and missiles fired at it, with the aid of the United States and other allies and that those which got through caused only minor damage.
Addressing his country’s attack on Israel, Khamenei said “the issue of the number of missiles fired or the missiles that hit the target” was “secondary.”
“The main issue is the emergence of the willpower of the Iranian nation and the armed forces in the international arena,” he said, according to his official website.
Iran and Israel appeared to have stepped back from the brink of a broader conflict following Friday’s attack, which Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian appeared to downplay to US media on Saturday.
Speaking to NBC News, he dismissed it as “no attack” and said the weapons used were “at the level of toys,” adding that if there was “no new adventure” by Israel then Iran “will have no response.”
The comments helped to dampen fears of an all-out war between the arch-foes which could spread into a wider regional conflict.
Iran’s Khamenei praises ‘success’ of military after Israel attack
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Iran’s Khamenei praises ‘success’ of military after Israel attack
- Supreme leader: ‘The armed forces showed a good image of their abilities and power and an admirable image of the Iranian nation’
Hamas to hold leadership elections in coming months: sources
- A Hamas member in Gaza said Hayya is a strong contender due to his relations with other Palestinian factions, including rival Fatah, which dominates the Palestinian Authority, as well as his regional standing
GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: Hamas is preparing to hold internal elections to rebuild its leadership following Israel’s killing of several of the group’s top figures during the war in Gaza, sources in the movement said on Monday.
“Internal preparations are still ongoing in order to hold the elections at the appropriate time in areas where conditions on the ground allow it,” a Hamas leader told AFP.
The vote is expected to take place “in the first months of 2026.”
Much of the group’s top leadership has been decimated during the war, which was sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel in October 2023.
The war has also devastated the Gaza Strip, leaving its more than two million residents in dire humanitarian conditions.
The leadership renewal process includes the formation of a new 50-member Shoura Council, a consultative body dominated by religious figures.
Its members are selected every four years by Hamas’ three branches: the Gaza Strip, the occupied West Bank and the movement’s external leadership.
Hamas prisoners in Israeli prisons are also eligible to vote.
During previous elections, held before the war, members across Gaza and the West Bank used to gather at different locations including mosques to choose the Shoura Council.
That council is responsible, every four years, for electing the 18-member political bureau and its chief, who serves as Hamas’s overall leader.
Another Hamas source close to the process said the timing of the political bureau elections remains uncertain “given the circumstances our people are going through.”
After Israel killed former Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July 2024, the group chose its then-Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar as his successor.
Israel accused Sinwar of masterminding the October 7 attack.
He too was killed by Israeli forces in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, three months after Haniyeh’s assassination.
Hamas then opted for an interim five-member leadership committee based in Qatar, postponing the appointment of a single leader until elections are held and given the risk of being targeted by Israel.
According to sources, two figures have now emerged as frontrunners to be the head of the political bureau: Khalil Al-Hayya and Khaled Meshaal.
Hayya, 65, a Gaza native and Hamas’s chief negotiator in ceasefire talks, has held senior roles since at least 2006, according to the US-based NGO the Counter-Extremism Project (CEP).
Meshaal, who led the Political Bureau from 2004 to 2017, has never lived in Gaza. He was born in the West Bank in 1956.
He joined Hamas in Kuwait and later lived in Jordan, Syria and Qatar. The CEP says he oversaw Hamas’s evolution into a political-military hybrid.
He currently heads the movement’s diaspora office.
A Hamas member in Gaza said Hayya is a strong contender due to his relations with other Palestinian factions, including rival Fatah, which dominates the Palestinian Authority, as well as his regional standing.
Hayya also enjoys backing from both the Shoura Council and Hamas’s military wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades.
Another source said other potential candidates include West Bank Hamas leader Zaher Jabarin and Shoura Council head Nizar Awadallah.
