DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran’s supreme leader on Saturday threatened Israel and the U.S. with “a crushing response” to attacks on Iran and its allies.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke as Iranian officials increasingly threaten another attack on Israel after the October 26 attack on the Islamic Republic that targeted military bases and other locations, killing at least five people.

Any further attacks from either side could engulf the broader Middle East, which is already reeling the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon, culminating in a broader regional conflict just around the corner the American presidential elections next Tuesday.

“The enemies, whether it is the Zionist regime or the United States of America, will certainly receive a crushing response to what they are doing to Iran, the Iranian nation and the resistance front,” Khamenei said in a video released by Iranian state media .

The supreme leader did not elaborate on the timing of the threatened attack or its scale. The US military operates at bases throughout the Middle East, with some troops now manning some High-altitude terminal defenseor THAAD, battery in Israel.

The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln is likely in the Arabian Sea, while Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said Friday that more destroyers, fighter squadrons, tankers and B-52 long-range bombers would come to the region to deter Iran . and its militant allies. Early Sunday, the U.S. Army’s Central Command said B-52s from Minot Air Force Base’s 5th Bomb Wing had arrived in the Middle East, without providing further details.

Khamenei, 85, had taken a more cautious stance in earlier comments, saying officials would weigh Iran’s response and that Israel’s attack “should not be exaggerated or downplayed.” Iran has launched two major direct attacks on Israel, in April and October.

But efforts by Iran to downplay the Israeli attack failed, as satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press show damage to military bases near Tehran linked to the country’s ballistic missile program, as well as to a Revolutionary Guard base used in satellite launches.

Iran’s allies, dubbed the “Axis of the Resistance” by Tehran, have also been seriously injured by the continued Israeli attacks, especially the Lebanese Hezbollah and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Iran has long used these groups as both an asymmetric way to attack Israel and as a shield against a direct attack. Some analysts believe these groups want Iran to do more to support them militarily.

However, Iran is facing its own problems at home as its economy struggles under the weight of international sanctions and the country has faced widespread, multiple protests for years. After Khamenei’s speech, Iran’s rial fell to 691,500 against the dollar, near an all-time low. It was 32,000 rials per dollar when Tehran reached its nuclear deal with world powers in 2015.

General Mohammad Ali Naini, a spokesman for Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard that controls the ballistic missiles needed to target Israel, gave an interview published by the semi-official Fars news agency just before Khamenei’s comments were released. In it, he warned that Iran’s response “will be wise, strong and beyond the understanding of the enemy.”

“The leaders of the Zionist regime must look out of their bedroom windows and protect their criminal pilots within their small territory,” he warned. Israeli Air Force pilots appear to have used air-launched ballistic missiles in the October 26 attack.

Khamenei met with university students on Saturday to mark Students’ Day, which commemorates a November 4, 1978 incident in which Iranian soldiers opened fire on students protesting against the Shah’s rule at the University of Tehran. The shooting killed and injured several students, and tensions over Iran at the time further escalated, eventually leading to the Shah fleeing the country and the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The crowd gave Khamenei a raucous welcome and chanted: “The blood in our veins is a gift to our leader!” Some also made a hand gesture – similar to a ‘time out’ signal – given by the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah assassinated in 2020 in a speech in which he threatened that US troops who arrived standing up in the Middle East would “return horizontally in coffins.”

Iran will mark the 45th anniversary of the US Embassy hostage crisis this Sunday, according to the Persian calendar. The storming of the embassy on November 4, 1979 by Muslim students led to the 444-day crisis, which deepened the decades-long enmity between Tehran and Washington that continues today.