Iran Will Carry Out 'Definitive, Painful' Retaliatory Strike, Likely Before Election: CNN

The Islamic Republic of Iran announced Saturday that it has the right to respond to the Israeli attack

@geraldcelenteTrump & Co getting you ready to go to war with Iran for Israel #FYP

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CNN, citing a high-ranking source familiar with Iran’s deliberations, reported Wednesday that Iran plans to respond to the Israeli strike from last weekend, likely before the U.S. presidential election on 5 November.

“The response of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the aggression of the Zionist regime will be definitive and painful,” the source said.

Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei posted on X in Hebrew on Sunday—a day after Israel carried out waves of attacks on targets in his country—that the “Zionist regime made a mistake.”

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“It erred in its calculations on Iran,” he posted. “We will cause it to understand what kind of strength, ability, initiative, and will the Iranian nation has.”

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Reports out of Iran indicated that the IDF targeted facilities at the Parchin military base located southeast of Tehran. The Guardian reported that the International Atomic Energy Agency believes that Iran has conducted tests of “high explosives that could trigger a nuclear weapon” at the facility. 

The paper said another strike hit the Khojir military base, a major missile production site.

Masoud Pezeshkian, the Iranian president, told reporters on Sunday that Iran does not seek a total war but will give an “appropriate response” to the strikes believed to have been fired from U.S.-controlled airspace in Iraq by Israeli fighter jets. The U.S. said it was not involved in the operation.

Khamenei accused Israel of exaggerating its success in the Saturday strike, but said it is also wrong to downplay the assault. He also blamed the UN and West for its failures in stopping the genocide in Gaza and Israeli aggression in Lebanon.

The Islamic Republic of Iran announced Saturday that it has the right to respond to the Israeli attack.

The Foreign Ministry issued a statement that said it reserves the right to strike back under Article 51 of the UN Charter. The statement said Iran categorically condemns the Zionist regime’s aggressive action on military installations in “clear violation of international law.”

Iran’s Press TV, citing Iran’s General Staff, reported that Tehran claimed to have intercepted “a significant number of Israeli missiles, and stopped military aircraft from penetrating Iranian airspace.”

The Iranians said the Israeli aircraft used airspace controlled by the U.S. in Iraq to carry out the attack. The strikes occurred from within 100 kilometers from the Iranian borders and in Iraqi airspace, according to IRNA.

Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, wrote a letter to the UN condemning these “deliberate acts of aggression by the Zionist regime in the strongest terms.”

“Israel’s unlawful attacks violate the foundational principles of international law and the United Nations Charter, particularly Article 2, Paragraph 4, which strictly prohibits the use of force against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of any state. The Israeli regime’s actions constitute a grave threat to international peace and security and further destabilize an already fragile region,” the statement read.

Seyed Mohammad Marandi, a professor from the University of Tehran, told Sky News on Sunday that it was the Israeli strike on the embassy that changed the Iranian approach of “strategic patience.”

“From now on, Iran has to punish the regime so it does not strike again,” he said. “It’s up to the Israeli regime. They’re going to have to take their punishment…they’re going to have to be hurt…but Iran is prepared to do this again and again because Iran easily outguns the regime. Iran can go on, wave after wave, as I said, with thousands and thousands—many thousands—of missile strikes and many thousands of drone strikes within days. So it’s up to the regime. Do they want to destroy everything and devastate everything? We’ll see.”