On Thursday, during a speech in Isfahan, the Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran, General Hossein Salami, declared his readiness to launch a “painful” strike against Israel if it dares to attack Iranian targets in response to the rocket attack on 1 October. According to Reuters, Iran fired about 200 rockets at Israel using the latest hypersonic missiles, which was a response to the death of the former leader of the Palestinian Hamas movement Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed in July.
“If you make a mistake and attack our targets, whether in the region or in Iran itself, we will respond painfully,” General Salami said, indicating readiness for escalation. The warning came as General Abbas Nilfouroushan, a senior commander of the elite Corps unit who was killed in an Israeli strike in Lebanon in late September, was buried.
Tensions between the two countries escalated after Iran said it was also acting in response to the death of an Iranian general in Lebanon and the leader of the Shiite Hezbollah organisation, Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in the same attack. Israel, in turn, promised that Iran would “pay” for the rocket attack.
General Salami also expressed his distrust of the THAAD system supplied by the United States to Israel, calling it an “unreliable shield” against Iranian strikes. He stressed that he knew the enemy’s weaknesses: “We know your vulnerabilities, and you know them too.”
This threat comes amid intensified diplomatic efforts by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who is touring the region, including Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, to reduce tensions.
