Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Tuesday called Israel a "rabid dog" for its strikes in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge, and urged Muslims to arm Palestinians to enable them to counter what he termed genocide. In a speech marking the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, Khamenei criticized the United States and European countries for what he said were their efforts to limit the military capacity of Palestinian fighters in Gaza. Of Israel, he said: "This rabid dog, this rapacious wolf, has attacked innocent people and humanity must show a reaction. This is genocide, a catastrophe of historical scale." "They have been pounding innocent people day and night and these men women and children are defending themselves with minimum means, and now Americans and Europeans want to take even that away ... so that those merciless beasts could pound without qualm." Khamenei denounced what he said was a ruling by U.S. President Barack Obama to disarm Palestinians -- an apparent reference to U.S. opposition to efforts by Hamas, the Islamic terrorist group that controls Gaza, to obtain weapons such as missiles and rockets. Khamenei said Iran took the opposite view about arming Palestinians. "Everyone, whoever has the means, especially in the Islamic world, they should do what they can to arm the Palestinian nation ... the Zionist regime deeply regrets starting this [war] but has no way out." Israel launched Operation Protective Edge three weeks ago with the goal of halting rocket attacks on its civilian population by Hamas and other Gaza terrorist groups. It later initiated a ground operation to find and destroy the warren of Hamas tunnels that crisscross the border area and that Hamas uses to commit terror attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers. Iran is at loggerheads with Western powers on a range of foreign policy issues including its nuclear program and its support for Hamas, Syria's President Bashar Assad and the Lebanese Shiite terrorist movement Hezbollah. Khamenei's speech to a crowd of hundreds of thousands in Tehran was broadcast live on state television. Khamenei was accompanied by senior government officials.
