‘You’ll pay, Israel’: Iran vows revenge
Assassination in Syria threatens to widen the war
Iran has vowed that Israel will pay for a deadly airstrike on Syria’s capital, Damascus, which killed a senior officer in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
President Ebrahim Raisi said Israel “will certainly pay for this crime”, while government officials have posted on social media that it is only a matter of time before Iran strikes back.
“Without a doubt, this action is another sign of frustration, helplessness, and incapacity of the usurping Zionist regime in the region,” Mr Raisi said.
It came as Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian tweeted that “Tel Aviv faces a tough countdown” following the attack.
Brigadier General Razi Mousavi was killed in a strike on the suburb of Sayeda Zeinab on Sunday. It has been alleged he was responsible for co-ordinating the military alliance between Iran and Syria, and was believed by Israel to be involved in Tehran supplying weapons to terror proxies in the area, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah terror group.
Mr Raisi’s threats of payback came as Israel hit Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon as a response to rocket fire and as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was determined to keep fighting, refusing to acknowledge a new ceasefire plan for the Gaza war developed by Egypt and Qatar.
“We are expanding the fight in the coming days and this will be a long battle and it isn’t close to finished,” he said to members of his Likud party.
Earlier this month, Iran accused Israel of killing two members of the Revolutionary Guard in Syria. Israel’s military has carried out deadly strikes in Syria for years as part of a campaign to stop what it has characterised as Iranian “military entrenchment” there.
Those strikes have increased in intensity since the October 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas.
Egypt and Qatar are trying to mediate between Israel and Hamas and the latest plan calls for a staged hostage release and the formation of a Palestinian government.
It is understood the proposal received a cold shoulder from both parties but that it wasn’t rejected altogether, raising the possibility of further diplomatic discussions.
The new proposal falls short of Israel’s goal of destroying Hamas. However, since Mr Netanyahu is facing increasing pressure to secure the release of more than 100 hostages, there is speculation that may pave the way for negotiation.
It follows a mission by the World Health Organisation to barely functioning hospitals in northern Gaza and growing fears of starvation as aid trucks are being prevented from entering the war zone.
“WHO’s team have heard harrowing accounts shared by health workers and victims of the suffering caused by the explosions,” the UN health agency chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on X.
“One child had lost their whole family in the strike on the Al-Maghazi refugee camp. A nurse at the hospital suffered the same loss,” he said.
Rows of victims’ bodies, shrouded in white bags, lined the ground at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza.
“The hospital is taking in far more patients than its bed capacity and staff can handle,” Mr Tedros said.