Following last week’s airstrike that targeted Iranian forces based at the Tiyas or T-4 airbase in Syria, two Iranian officials have threatened Israel.
On Monday, according to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)-affiliated Tasnim News, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi said that Israel would receive “required responses sooner or later,” and that Israel “cannot take (such) an action and be exempt from punishment.”
Seven Iranian military advisers, including one colonel, were killed in the airstrike.
In addition, last Friday, Iranian Army Ground Forces commander Brigadier General Kiumars Heidari said that Israel can no longer attack Iran and that the date has already been set for Israel’s destruction.
The latter comment is an apparent reference to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s prediction that Israel will be destroyed within 25 years.
Heidari also boasted that “Iran is the most stable and strongest country in an unstable and volatile region now.” He did not address the ongoing protests against the regime or the continued devaluation of its currency.
The threats against Israel by Qassemi and Heidari follow one by Ali Akbar Velayati, a foreign policy adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, last week in the wake of the strikes against the airbase. Velayati said a week ago that the “crimes will not remain unanswered.”
In addition to Iranian officials threatening retaliation for the airstrikes against the T-4 airbase, two officials threatened Tel Aviv and Haifa, two of Israel’s largest cities, with destruction.
On Friday last week, the IDF announced that the Iranian drone that entered Israeli airspace in February was loaded with explosives and showed “an Iranian intent to carry out an attack,” an act of war against Israel.
The threats from Iran, as well as the escalation of military activity in Syria, including a coordinated attack on Syria’s chemical weapons facilities by the United States and its allies, has prompted Israel to be on alert for possible direct attack by Iran.
[Photo: Tasnim News ]