DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran’s supreme leader on Saturday threatened Israel and America with “a crushing response” over attacks on Iran and its allies.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke as Iranian officials are increasingly threatening to launch yet another strike against Israel after its October 26 attack on the Islamic Republic that targeted military bases and other locations and killed at least five people.

Any further attacks from either side raises the risk of engulfing the wider Middle East, already teetering over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip and Israel’s ground invasion of Lebanon, into a wider regional conflict just ahead of the American presidential election this Tuesday.

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

The supreme leader did not elaborate on the timing of the threatened attack, nor the scope. The American military operates on bases throughout the Middle East, with some troops now manning a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery in Israel.

The United States Ship Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier likely is in the Arabian Sea, while the Pentagon press secretary, Major General Pat Ryder, said Friday that more destroyers, fighter squadrons, tankers and B-52 long-range bombers would be coming to the region to deter Iran and its militant allies.

The 85-year-old ayatollah had struck a more cautious approach in earlier remarks, saying officials would weigh Iran’s response and that Israel’s attack “should not be exaggerated nor downplayed.” 

Iran has previously launched two major direct attacks on Israel, in April and October.

Yet efforts by Iran to downplay the Israeli attack faltered as satellite photos showed damage to military bases near Tehran linked to the country’s ballistic missile program, as well as at a Revolutionary Guard base used in satellite launches.

Iran’s allies, called the “Axis of Resistance” by Tehran, also have been severely hurt by ongoing Israeli attacks, particularly Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. 

Iran long has used those terrorist groups as both an asymmetrical way to attack Israel and as a shield against a direct assault. Some analysts believe those groups want Iran to do more to back them militarily.

Iran, however, has been dealing with its own problems at home, as its economy struggles under the weight of international sanctions and it has faced years of widespread, multiple protests. 

After Ayatollah Khamenei’s speech, the Iranian rial fell to 691,500 against the dollar, near an all-time low. It had been valued at 32,000 rials to the dollar when Tehran reached its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

General Mohammad Ali Naini, a spokesman for Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard which controls the ballistic missiles needed to target Israel, gave an interview published by the semiofficial Fars news agency just the supreme leader’s remarks were released. 

In it, he warned Iran’s response “will be wise, powerful and beyond the enemy’s comprehension.”

“The leaders of the Zionist regime should look out from the windows of their bedrooms 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.

Associated Press