Rare sermon portends bad things to come: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, led the Friday Prayer in Tehran today—a rare move—and warned that his country will strike Israel again in the future, calling the barrage of 181 ballistic missiles “completely legal and legitimate.”
The last time the ayatollah led these prayers was nearly five years ago; then, as now, he graced the public with his presence primarily to engage in anti-West saber-rattling.
Overnight, Israel carried out strikes in both Lebanon and the West Bank; intelligence reports indicated that Hezbollah was meeting in a bunker south of Beirut, so Israeli strikes tracked those movements and attempted to target them. Israeli military leaders said these strikes attempted to target Hashem Safieddine, presumed to be a future Hezbollah leader taking over in place of Hassan Nasrallah, whom Israel assassinated a week ago.
In his sermon, the ayatollah said Iran would be fueled by Nasrallah’s killing. “It is the duty and responsibility of all Muslims…to support Lebanon’s jihad and the battle for al-Aqsa mosque,” he reportedly said. “There is no doubt that the Zionists and the Americans are dreaming—the Zionist entity will be uprooted from the ground, it has no roots, it is fake, unstable, and exists only because of American support.”
Israel “won’t last long,” the ayatollah added.
It seems, based on the ayatollah’s public pronouncements, that Iran will continue to dole out retribution toward Israel for their impressive dismantling of Hezbollah, but questions remain as to how successful future Iranian strikes will be. Another outstanding question is whether Israel will target their nuclear sites, attempting to hinder further development—a strategy Israeli politicians and military personnel have discussed, but which American officials have warned them not to pursue.
“Unlike a previous such demonstration in April, Iran’s missile command was really trying this time,” argues Bloomberg‘s Marc Champion. “They gave no lengthy notice. They used only the most potent weapons in the Iranian arsenal, ballistic missiles, and these were bunched so as to saturate and penetrate Israel’s air defenses. A significant number made it through, yet their impact appears to have been minimal.…between the outcome of two massive conventional missile strikes and Hezbollah’s incapacitation, it’s now clear to both sides that Iran has no effective deterrent against an Israeli attack—unless and until Iran develops a nuclear arsenal.”
The U.S. angle: According to new reporting from The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. has been kept increasingly out of the loop by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Though officials have been mulling targeting Iranian oil and nuclear sites, “Israel has not yet made a final decision about what its response will look like—and the White House has been blindsided repeatedly by Israel’s decisions in recent weeks,” reports the Journal. “Netanyahu ordered the airstrike that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah from a New York hotel room, even as Biden administration officials scrambled at the United Nations a few blocks away to avert a widening Middle East war last week.”
But “the decision to approve the Sept. 27 strike from U.S. soil without alerting the White House beforehand—and later to make public a photo of himself issuing the order—underscored the growing divergence between Netanyahu’s government and the White House.”
And, per the Journal‘s reporting, a U.S. official had been in Tel Aviv urging Israeli military officials not to escalate against Hezbollah; several hours later was the pager attack, for which Israel is almost certainly responsible.
The examples are stacking up, and it’s looking increasingly like Netanyahu’s government is acting somewhat unilaterally, forcing American allies into a more reactive posture.
Scenes from New York:
Pitch for reality TV show: the New Yorker laborers and the longshoremen switch jobs for a year. CC @MarkBurnettTV https://t.co/zVvKk9v70M
— Marc Andreessen ???????? (@pmarca) October 3, 2024
QUICK HITS
The European Union voted today to impose huge new tariffs—up to 35 percent—on electric vehicles imported from China, per Bloomberg, adding to the existing 10 percent tariffs levied on all imported cars: “The bloc is actively trying to reduce its dependencies on China, with former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi warning last month that ‘China’s state-sponsored competition’ was a threat to the EU that could leave it vulnerable to coercion. The EU, which did €739 billion ($815 billion) in trade with China last year, was split on whether to move forward with the duties.” The International Longshoremen Association’s strike is likely to end soon, as they reached a deal for their wages to be increased by an eye-popping 62 percent over the course of their six-year contract. That increase would mean the longshoremen’s wages total about $63 per hour by the end of the contract, up from the current rate of $39 per hour. “‘Teens are insatiable when it comes to “feel good” dopamine effects,’ a Meta document cited in the attorneys general’s complaint noted,” writes Andrew Solomon for The New Yorker. “Instagram ‘has a pretty good hold on the serendipitous aspect of discovery…. Every time one of our teen users finds something unexpected their brains deliver them a dopamine hit.’ Judith Edersheim, a co-director of the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior, at Harvard, likens the effect to putting children in a twenty-four-hour casino and giving them chocolate-flavored bourbon. ‘The relentlessness, the intrusion, it’s all very intentional,’ she told me. ‘No other addictive device has ever been so pervasive.'” LFG!
JUST IN: A strong jobs report. The US economy added 254,000 jobs in September. That’s way above expectations and a nice bounce from 159,000 in August. (Both July & August revised up)
Unemployment rate: 4.1%. (Down from 4.2% in August)
Wages: +4% in past year (vs. 2.5%… pic.twitter.com/lKiH8SWQSi
— Heather Long (@byHeatherLong) October 4, 2024
She chose to brand herself this way! It’s not sexism.
How many times do we have to do this. This is how she chose to introduce herself to a national audience. It was her campaign strategy.
Can upper middle class women get over themselves for one single minute https://t.co/g06V27gInV pic.twitter.com/P161hRz1zu
— Lindsay Ballant (@lindsayballant) October 3, 2024
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