Iran anniversary marchers chant ‘death to Israel’ amid regional tensions over Gaza

DUBAI: Hundreds of thousands of people chanted “Death to Israel” in rallies across Iran to mark the Islamic Revolution’s 45th anniversary on Sunday, with some burning US and Israeli flags amid the ongoing war between Israel and Tehran-backed Hamas.

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 war on Palestinian Islamist 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 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, 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 on Sunday 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.