A top Iranian general, blamed by Israel for masterminding a preempted bid to launch drone attacks from Syria, warned Israel on Sunday that its strikes against Iran would not be tolerated much longer.
“These insane operations will surely be the last steps of the Zionist regime,” tweeted Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
Israeli fighter jets late on Saturday carried out airstrikes in Syria to thwart a planned attack on Israel by operatives from the Revolutionary Guards as well as Shiite militias who had been planning on sending “kamikaze” attack drones into Israel armed with explosives, the army said.
Earlier Sunday Foreign Minister Israel Katz appeared to threaten Soleimani.
“Israel is acting to strike the head of the Iranian snake and uproot its teeth,” Katz said in a Ynet news site interview. “Iran is the head of the snake and Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards Quds Force, is the snake’s teeth.”
Katz said Israel’s airstrikes to thwart the drone attack “conveyed a clear message to Iran and all its supporters that they are not immune from attack, no matter where they are.”
The tweet late on Sunday, from an account widely associated with Soleimani, appeared to be his first public reaction and came hours after Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah threatened Israel with a reprisal attack after two of its members were killed in the Israeli strike in Syria, and two UAVs crashed in and around the terror group’s Beirut offices in an incident also blamed on the Jewish state.
“From tonight, I tell the Israeli army on the border, be prepared and wait for us,” said the Hezbollah leader in a televised address, taunting that a retaliation could come in “one day, two days, three days…”
Israeli forces in the north have been put on high alert, amid fears of a reprisal attack, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held an emergency meeting with defense officials overnight Saturday-Sunday amid the heightened tensions.
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