The Chief Commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Major General Hossein Salami, has warned in an interview with the al-Mayadeen news network that Tehran will respond in kind to "any act of evil" by Israel.
"The evil deeds committed by the Zionists in the region will turn against them and expose Israel to real dangers in the future. If they continue committing them, they will draw closer and closer to collapse", Salami argued, insisting that "all the conditions for the collapse" of the Jewish state "are ready".
He spoke a few days after Mohammad Baqeri, chief of staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, vowed retaliation for any possible move by Israel to target what the general described as a "resistance front", an apparent reference to an alleged alliance between Iran, the Syrian government, and the militant group Hezbollah.
Baqeri told reporters that the Jewish state believes it can "constantly target Syrian soil, and make mischievous moves in various places and the seas" without receiving any response.
"Certainly efforts undertaken in recent days and efforts in the future that will endanger their [Israel's] interests will bring them to their senses, and the future of the resistance front is bright", Baqeri claimed.
The remarks came after the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) announced last week that they had attacked missile batteries in Syria, in retaliation for the launch of a missile that fell near the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Centre southeast of the Israeli city of Dimona.
BREAKING: A surface-to-air missile was fired from Syria to Israel’s southern Negev.
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) April 22, 2021
In response, we struck the battery from which the missile was launched and additional surface-to-air batteries in Syria.
The state-run Syrian news agency SANA, in turn, reported that Syrian air defence systems had repelled an Israeli rocket attack near the capital Damascus. At least four Syrian soldiers were reportedly injured in the attack, which occurred about 45 km northeast of the Syrian capital.
The Syrian government has repeatedly attributed the missile attacks, which, in particular, targeted armaments depots in Syria, to the IDF.
Tehran rejects Israel's right to exist, frequently vowing to destroy it, while Tel Aviv, apart from accusing Iran of supplying arms to Damascus, has repeatedly pledged to stop the Islamic Republic from obtaining nuclear weapons. The Iranian government insists that its nuclear programme is purely peaceful.
