Both Iran and Hezbollah are threatening worldwide retaliation against Israel after the January 18 deaths of a number of Hezbollah terrorists and Iranian military officers, according to a report by Brig.-Gen. (ret.) Dr. Shimon Shapira for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs that was published Sunday.

Shapira noted that in many news reports, Hezbollah was seen as trying to limit the scope of its retaliation so as not to escalate the violence. But Shapira noted that though the response may not come soon, it will surely happen eventually:

Hizbullah’s response, therefore, was limited and legitimate from Iran’s standpoint in terms of the military target that was chosen and the geographic location, which is internationally disputed. Yet, at the same time, Iran is now concentrating most of its own and Hizbullah’s intelligence efforts on harsh retaliation somewhere outside of the region. The aim is to strike Israeli or Jewish targets at an operationally feasible place and time. The commander of the IRGC, General Ali Jafari, hinted at this by saying “Israel should expect a powerful response anywhere in the world.”

Nasrallah, for his part, in his speech on January 30, the day of remembrance for the fallen in the Kuneitra operation, asserted that all of the existing rules of the game with Israel before the Kuneitra operation were no longer in existence. In mentioning the assassination of the second leader of Hizbullah, Abbas Musawi, he alluded to the price Israel paid with the 1992 bombing attack on the Israeli embassy in Argentina carried out with Iranian assistance, implying that this would be a model for the response.

Last week Hezbollah killed two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border attack.

[Photo: David Holt / Flickr ]