ranian President Ebrahim Raeisi says the Islamic Republic will continue to support Palestine as the main issue of the Muslim world.

"We have never had and will never have any doubt about this policy. In our view, Palestine has been and will be the first issue of the Muslim world,” Raeisi said in a Friday meeting with head of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas Ismail Haniyeh, who took part in the swearing-in ceremony of the Iranian president Thursday.

Raeisi commended Haniyeh’s optimistic stance on the liberation of al-Quds and the end of Palestine’s occupation and said “Operation al-Quds Sword” -- the Palestinian resistance groups' 11-day retaliatory rocket and missile launches in response to Israel's brutal bombing campaign of Gaza in May -- showed that a great leap has been made in the fight against the occupiers.

"Today, signs of great victory of the resistant movement have emerged and Operation al-Quds Sword was one of the signs of this victory,” he said.

In Operation Sword al-Quds, he added, the resistance forces tightened the noose on the Zionist enemy in a way that neither the Zionists themselves nor their supporters could even imagine.