General Abdollahi: Zionist Regime Don't Dream Iran Won't Respond To Cruelty

Brigadier General Ali Abdollahi. (Wikimedia Commons/Tasnim News Agency/Mighdad Madadi)

JAKARTA - Iran's top military officials warned Israel not to doubt the country's determination to avenge the death of senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

Deputy Chief of Staff for Coordination of the Iranian Armed Forces, Brigadier General Ali Abdollahi delivered the statement at a ceremony in Koumeleh City.

"The Zionist regime should not dream that Iran will not respond to this cruelty, because the Islamic Republic has proven its desire to mobilize all its capacity to respond to enemy violations of its land and water," he said.

The official quoted a statement made by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei after the assassination, in which he promised Iran would give a "hard response" to the atrocities.

"However, the response time will be determined by the country's senior leader and commander," said General Abdollahi.

Haniyeh, the late head of the Political Bureau of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, was killed along with one of his bodyguards in Iran's capital, Tehran, on July 31, a day after he attended the inauguration ceremony of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.

Abdollahi cited several examples of the country's success in revenge against aggressors, such as the defense against a fully armed Iraqi attack by the West.

"Security, strength and progress of the country are the result of the sacrifices made by the martyrs and their fighters (during the war)," he said.

Brigadier General Abdollahi also said the shooting of Iranian ballistic missiles against bases occupied by the United States in Iraq in January 2020 in response to the previous Washington assassination of Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani.

Iran's response to the killings comes "while there has been no (such) direct attack on US interests over the previous 70 years," he explained.

Next, he also pointed to Iran's retaliation on April 13 against a deadly attack by the Israeli regime that had targeted the consular section of the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, Syria earlier that month.

The retaliation left the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targeting occupied Palestinian territories with a series of drones and missiles, which caused damage to Israeli military bases there.

"Many countries have (different types of) equipment and weapons, but having a desire to deploy them is a different matter, and enemies know Iran has a desire to do so," Brigadier General Abdollahi said.

"Our enemies have been humiliated and do not dare to violate the territory of the Islamic Republic," he added, stressing, "Therefore, we convey this to global arrogance, so that they do not test the determination of the Iranian nation once again," he concluded.