The war between Israel and Hamas is setting the Middle East ablaze. Thousands of people gathered in Iran’s main cities to welcome and support the unprecedented attack launched overnight from Saturday to Sunday against Israel, the sworn enemy of the Islamic Republic for forty-five years.
In Tehran, demonstrators gathered in Palestine Square, in the center, shortly after the announcement of the launch of Operation “Honest Promise” by the Revolutionary Guards, the ideological army of power.
Tehran threatens Israel with next “slap”
“Death to Israel”, “Death to America”, they chanted, using traditional slogans since the Islamic revolution of 1979. The demonstrators brandished flags of Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah, supported by Iran. Some of them exhibited the portrait of General Qassem Soleimani, the architect of Iranian military operations in the Middle East, killed in January 2020 by an American strike in Iraq.
Iranian leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had promised to “punish” Israel after the strike blamed on Israel targeted the Iranian consulate in Damascus and killed seven Iranian soldiers on April 1. A huge banner had been hanging for several days on a building in Palestine Square to call, in Hebrew, on Israelis to “take shelter”. During the night, a new mural was unveiled on the square. It shows a torn Israeli flag with missiles in the background, with the threatening slogan: “The next slap will be more violent.”
Brief rallies were also held in front of the British embassy, in the absence of representations from the United States and Israel, two countries with which Iran does not have diplomatic relations. On the other hand, calm reigned in the other districts of the immense capital, where queues formed at certain service stations to fill the tanks as a precautionary measure.
Fall of the Iranian currency
In Isfahan, in the center of the country, people gathered around the grave of General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, the highest ranking of the seven members of the Revolutionary Guards killed in the Iranian consulate in Damascus. The launch of drones and missiles towards Israel was also welcomed around the tomb of General Soleimani in Kerman, in the South, as well as in the cities of Tabriz, Kermanshah and Ahvaz.
In this climate of worry and uncertainty, the rial, the national currency, fell to a historic low on Saturday, at around 650,000 to the dollar on the parallel market.