Speaking on Wednesday following the attack, dubbed Operation True Promise II, the top commander said the country exercised self-restraint after the Israeli regime’s aggression against the country in July but ran out of patience following its assassination of Hezbollah’s secretary general and a top Iranian commander in Beirut.
The regime assassinated Ismail Haniyeh, former chief of the Political Bureau of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, during a targeted killing in the Iranian capital Tehran on July 31.
“After Martyr Haniyeh’s assassination, Iran went through a tough period of self-restraint amid repeated requests by the Americans and Europeans, who would ask us to exercise self-restraint so they would establish a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip (where the Israeli regime has been waging a genocidal war),” Major General Bagheri stated.
“However, after Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah and Brigadier General Abbas Nilforoushan’s martyrdom, the situation was no longer tolerable,” he added.
The Hezbollah leader and the Iranian commander were assassinated during intense Israeli airstrikes on the southern suburb of Beirut on Friday.
On Tuesday, Iran responded to the triple assassinations as well as the regime’s ongoing deadly aggression against Gaza and Lebanon by launching around 200 missiles toward the Israeli military and intelligence bases all over the occupied Palestinian territories.
Flares and missiles were seen in the Tel Aviv sky and explosions could be heard in the occupied al-Quds during the operation dubbed Operation True Promise II, while “direct hits” were reported in Negev, Sharon, and other locations.
According to Baqeri, the targets of the “heroic” operation that “served as a response to many of the Zionists’ crimes,” included three of the Israeli regime’s main airbases.
He named the bases as the headquarters of the regime’s Mossad spy agency, which he identified as the “center for terrorism,” the regime’s Nevatim airbase that houses its F-35 warplanes, and the Hatzerim base that was used towards enabling Nasrallah’s assassination.
The targets also featured the regime’s strategic radars, the centers housing the regime’s tanks and personnel carriers, and the center accommodating those of the regime’s forces that partake in massacres against Palestinians in Gaza.
The military chief asserted that the Islamic Republic’s Armed Forces were completely prepared to respond to the potential repetition of such atrocities on the part of the regime, describing the forces’ capabilities as “many times more than” what was displayed during True Promise II.
“If the Zionist regime, which has reached madness, were not controlled by the United States and Europe, and sought to either continue its atrocities or take action against our territorial integrity and sovereignty, last night’s operation would be repeated with multiple magnitude and all of their infrastructures would be struck.”
