Senior military official says Israel shouldn’t doubt Iran’s resolve to retaliate over assassination of Haniyeh

The Iranian Armed Forces’ Deputy Chief of Staff for Coordination, Brigadier General Ali Abdollahi made the remarks during a ceremony in the northwestern Iranian city of Koumeleh on Wednesday.

“The Zionist regime should not dream that Iran would not respond to this atrocity…because the Islamic Republic has [already] proven its will to deploy all its capacities towards responding to enemies’ violation of its soil and waters,” he said.

The official quoted remarks made by Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei following the assassination, in which the Leader pledged that the Islamic Republic would deliver a “harsh response” to the atrocity.

“The time of the response, however, will be determined by the Leader and the country’s senior commanders,” Abdollahi added.

Haniyeh, the late head of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas’ Political Bureau, was assassinated alongside one of his bodyguards in the Iranian capital Tehran on July 31, a day after he attended the swearing-in ceremony of Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian.

Abdollahi cited several instances of the country’s successful retaliation against aggressors such as its steadfast defense of its soil during the 1980s in the face of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s invading army, which was being heavily armed by the West.

“The country’s security, power, and advancement are the results of the sacrifices that were made by its martyrs and fighters [during the war],” he said.

Abdollahi also enumerated Iran’s firing of volleys of ballistic missiles against United States-occupied bases in Iraq in January 2020 in response to Washington’s earlier assassination of the Islamic Republic’s senior anti-terror commander, Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani.

Iran’s response to the assassination came “while there had been no direct attack [like it] on the US’s interests throughout the previous 70 years”, the official stated.

He also pointed to the country’s retaliation of April 13 against a deadly attack by the Israeli regime that had targeted the consular section of the Islamic Republic’s Embassy in the Syrian capital Damascus earlier that month. The reprisal saw Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) targeting the occupied Palestinian territories with a barrage of drones and missiles, inflicting damage on Israeli military bases there.

“There are many countries that have [various type of] equipment and weapons, but having the will to deploy these is a different matter, and the enemy knows that Iran possesses the will to do so,” Abdollahi said.

“Our enemies have been humiliated and do not dare to violate the Islamic Republic’s territory…,” he added, asserting, “Therefore, we say this to the global arrogance that it should not test the Iranian nation’s steadfastness once again.”

A commander of the Quds Force of the IRGC has also warned that Tehran’s response to Israel’s assassination of Haniyeh will be “different and surprising”.

Brigadier General Mohsen Chizari, deputy commander for operations of the IRGC Quds Force, made the remarks in an interview with the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) on Wednesday, stressing that Iran will respond to Haniyeh’s assassination “in due time.”

Touching upon “Operation Arbaeen” carried out by Lebanon’s resistance movement Hezbollah against the Israeli regime, Chizari stressed that the attack was in response to the assassination of the group’s top commander Fuad Shukr, adding that Iran’s crushing response will definitely be different.