Iran Vows to Accelerate Arming West Bank

“We will speed up arming the West Bank and retain the right for any response,” Commander of the IRGC Aerospace Force Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh told reporters in Tehran on Monday, when asked about Iran’s reaction to the violation of the country’s airspace by an Israeli aircraft.

On Sunday, the IRGC announced that its aerospace forces had tracked and shot down a radar-evading stealth Israeli drone which was intending to penetrate the airspace over Natanz nuclear zone. The intruding aircraft was intercepted by a surface-to-air missile.

The issue of arming Palestine attracted a great deal of attention after Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei urged the necessity for armed confrontation with Israel, which has launched a military offensive against Gaza since July 8.

Back on July 23, Ayatollah Khamenei described the armed resistance as the only way to confront the “destructive regime” of Israel, noting, “Based on these realities, we believe that the West Bank should also be armed like Gaza and those who are interested in Palestine’s destiny should act in this regard in order to relieve Palestinians’ distress.”

Later on July 29, in a sermon on the occasion of Eid al-Fitr, Imam Khamenei reiterated the necessity for supporting Palestinian resistance groups in their fight with the Israeli regime, saying that the US is seeking to disarm Palestinians to help Israel suppress them easily.

“Unlike the view and effort of supporters of 'the child-murderer Zionist regime', the whole world and the Islamic world in particular, have an obligation to arm the Palestinian nation as much as possible,” the Leader said at the time.

Ayatollah Khamenei underlined that the issue of Gaza is the crux of the matter in the Islamic world and even the world of humanity today.

It is the humanity’s duty to react to Israel’s ruthless aggression against people of the Gaza Strip, the Leader insisted.