‘Death to Israel’

Hundreds of thousands of people chanted “Death to Israel” in rallies across Iran to mark the Islamic Revolution’s 45th anniversary yesterday, with some burning US and Israeli flags amid the ongoing Israeli offensive in Gaza.

President Ebrahim Raisi, in a televised speech, accused Tehran’s arch-foe the United States and some Western countries of backing “the Zionist regime’s (Israel) crimes against humanity in Gaza”.

State TV said millions had turned out at rallies and it showed large crowds chanting “Death to Israel, Death to America!”, a common practice during state-organised rallies on the anniversary of the 1979 revolution that toppled the US-backed monarch.

State media published a picture of some marchers hanging an effigy of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by a noose.

Israel’s four-month-old offensive on Palestinian group Hamas in Gaza has rippled across the Middle East, with groups backed by Iran mounting attacks on Israeli and US targets.

Earlier this month, US forces carried out strikes against Iran-aligned groups in Iraq, Syria and Yemen in retaliation for a deadly attack on US troops at a remote outpost in Jordan.

Backing the Palestinian cause has been a pillar of the Islamic Republic since the revolution that overthrew the US-backed Shah, and a way for the Shia-dominated country to fashion itself as a leader of the Muslim world.

Hamas is part of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance”, a regional alliance that includes Lebanon’s Hezbollah, the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad, Shia militia groups in Iraq and the Houthis who control a large part of Yemen.

Iran, which says all members of the alliance make their own decisions independently, has repeatedly declared that Tehran will not directly intervene in Gaza-related hostilities unless it is itself attacked by Israel or the United States.

The revolution anniversary marchers yesterday included soldiers, students, clerics and senior political and military officials. Black-clad women with small children were among those flocking streets across the country, many carrying portraits of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The anniversary come ahead of March 1 legislative elections, the first national vote since a large-scale protest movement shook Iran after the death of Mahsa Amini on September 16, 2022. Amini, 22, died after being arrested for allegedly violating the Islamic republic’s strict dress code for women.