In a statement on Saturday, Ayatollah Khamenei expressed his condolences to the family of Nasrallah, the resistance front, the Lebanese people and the entire Islamic Ummah. He also declared five days of national mourning in Iran.
“The blows of the resistance front against the weary and decaying body of the Zionist regime will, with the help of God, be more crushing,” the Supreme Leader said.
The evil Zionist regime did not achieve victory in this, Ayatollah Khamenei stressed.
Nasrallah, who led Hezbollah for 32 years, was martyred on Friday in a massive Israeli airstrike on a group of residential buildings in Dahieh, a dense urban area south of Beirut, using dozens of 2,000-pound American bunker-buster bombs.
He was martyred while planning to defend the defenseless people of Dahieh and their destroyed homes, as he had for decades defended the oppressed people of Palestine, their occupied towns and villages, their homes, and their loved ones, Ayatollah Khamenei said.
“The blessing of martyrdom after all this struggle was his undeniable right,” he stated.
“The Islamic world lost a great personality, the resistance front lost a prominent standard-bearer, and Hezbollah lost an unparalleled leader,” Ayatollah Khamenei said.
However, the blessings of his decades of jihad will never be lost, he added.
The Supreme Leader noted that the foundation that Nasrallah established in Lebanon and the direction he provided to other centers of resistance will not only remain intact but will, thanks to his blood and the blood of other martyrs, become even stronger.
The leader of Hezbollah was not just a person, but rather he was “a path and a school of thought”, and this path will continue, Ayatollah Khamenei said.