Iran’s Khamenei says Israel should stop bombing

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Israel’s “genocide” of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip should stop “immediately”, state TV reported on Tuesday, a day before U.S. President Joe Biden is due to visit Israel.
Israel has vowed to annihilate the Tehran-backed Hamas movement that rules Gaza after fighters burst into Israel on Oct. 7, in the deadliest day in the country’s 75-year-old history.
“No one can confront Muslims and the resistance forces if the Zionist regime’s crimes against Palestinians continue … the bombardment of Gaza must stop immediately,” Khamenei told a group of students in Tehran.
“The world is witnessing the Zionist regime’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza,” he said to chants of “Death to Israel”.
Backing the Palestinian cause has been a pillar of the Islamic Republic since the 1979 revolution and a way the Shi’ite-dominated country has fashioned itself as a leader of the Muslim world.
Israel, which Tehran refuses to recognise, has long accused Iran’s clerical rulers of stoking violence by supplying arms to Hamas. Tehran says it gives moral and financial support to the group.