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.
Israel’s ‘last struggles’? Netanyahu vigorously battles Iranian menace
Tehran has mocked Israel’s intensified efforts to root out the Iranian presence in the region after the IDF struck targets in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq in one day, while threatening to continue attacks against Iran’s ‘accomplices.’
“These insane operations are absolutely last struggles of the Zionist Regime,” Qassem Soleimani tweeted after the IDF accused the chief of Iran’s Quds Force of personally devising a plot to strike Israel with a flock of ‘killer drones.’
Hours later, Israel allegedly sent drones to hunt for Hezbollah targets in the Lebanese capital of Beirut. One surveillance UAV was downed by rock-throwing youths over Hezbollah's media office, while a second “suicide drone” exploded in the air.
Another attack against Iran-linked targets rocked the Iraqi Anbar province near the border with Syria on Sunday afternoon, when two unidentified UAVs targeted transport vehicles belonging to the Hezbollah faction known as Brigade 45. The strike, which the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) blamed on Israel, killed at least one Shiite fighter.
Tel Aviv, which admitted responsibility for the Syrian raid but has so far remained tight-lipped about the strikes in Lebanon and Iraq, did make it crystal clear on Sunday that it will go out against any nation-state that supports Iran in the region.
“We won’t tolerate attacks on Israel from any country in the area. Any country that allows its territory to be used for attacks against Israel will bear the consequences,” said Netanyahu.
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