Threats and defiance filled social media as Iran and Israel dueled on X this week.
Iran posted a message to Israel that translated to “Time is up.”
Israel then responded with a GIF beckoning Iran to bring it on.
— Embassy of Israel to the USA | #IsraelUSA75 (@IsraelinUSA) October 18, 2023
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdallohian added to the tone with a post that vastly overstated the numbers killed in a Gaza hospital explosion that Arba world blamed on Israel, which Israel said was caused by an errant rocket from Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
“After the terrible crime of the Zionist regime in the bombing and massacre of more than 1,000 innocent women and children in the hospital, the time has come for the global unity of humanity against this fake regime more hated than ISIS and its killing machine,” he posted on X.
“Time is OVER!” he added.
Iran had suggested it will unleash its servant militias against Israel.
“Time is running out very fast,” Amir-Abdollahian said Monday, according to The New York Times. “If the war crimes against the Palestinians are not immediately stopped, other multiple fronts will open and this is inevitable.”
He said an “axis of resistance” would take “pre-emptive action” that could come as quickly as “the coming few hours” because Iran-backed militias would “naturally not allow the Zionist regime to do whatever it wants in Gaza.”
A preview of what could await if the tough talk turns into a regional war came Wednesday when a base in Iraq that houses U.S. forces came under drone attack, according to Reuters.
Citing officials it did not name, Reuters reported no one was hurt in the attack on the al Asad air base, which it said was the first attack on the base in more than a year.
The two suicide attack drones were intercepted before they could reach the base.
Iraq has strongly condemned Israel and the United States — which has 2,500 troops in Iraq — is also being criticized.
Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-linked militia group, said Americans should get out of Iraq.
“These evil people must leave the country, otherwise they will taste the fire of hell in this world before the afterlife,” the group said in a statement.
Iraqi politician Hadi Al-Amiri, leader of an Iran-backed faction, called the explosion at the Gaza hospital “the massacre of the era, which can only be classified as a war crime.”
He said his group “will not hesitate to consider America and the West as partners in this hideous massacre.”
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
