This picture taken from the West Bank city of Hebron shows projectiles above the Israeli city of Ashdod [Hazem Bader/AFP]
The political consul of the Republic of Iran in South Africa says Iran will retaliate with “harsher” force if Israel responds to Iran’s missile attack.
Iran launched dozens of missiles at Israel in a wide-ranging attack on Tuesday, saying it was retaliation for multiple Israeli assassinations.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said it fired the missiles at Israel in response to deadly Israeli attacks against people in Gaza and Lebanon, as well as the assassinations of top IRGC, Hamas and Hezbollah leaders.
Israel and its top ally, the United States, said their respective militaries worked together to shoot down most of the nearly 200 projectiles that were fired by Iran, Al Jazeera reported.
ALSO READ: Iran fires missiles at Israel in new escalation
While Israeli officials vowed to respond after Iran’s missile attack, political consult of the Republic of Iran in South Africa Dr Hamid Rai told 702 they would retaliate.
Rai said the missile attack on Israel is a “response to all of the wrongdoings of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
“If they [Israel’ want to do anything, as our military commander and ministry of foreign affairs mentioned, our response to them will be harsher and I assure you that the missiles that we used were not the best that we have.
“All the third parties, the countries who are in between the entity of the occupied lands, they all have our messages,” Rai said.
While many in the Middle East fear that the escalation of attacks may lead to a nuclear bomb attack, Dr Rai is adamant that Iran does not have nuclear weapons.
“We don’t have any nuclear weapons. This thing [allegations] is more than twenty years we are saying to all the world that we don’t have any nuclear weapons, while Israel has its nuclear weapons.”
He said Iran is “not a friend of the US.”
“We are not a friend of the US government because they are helping the Israeli regime in killing people in Palestine and also in Lebanon. They’re not our friend and we expected them to help the Israeli regime to defend themselves.”
While Iran-backed groups across the region had already been drawn into the Gaza war, Tehran had largely refrained from direct attacks on its regional foe.
Early Tuesday, the Israeli military said troops had started “targeted ground raids” in south Lebanon, across Israel’s northern border, though officials have provided few details of the scale of the operation or its timeframe.
The Israeli ground offensive came despite growing calls for de-escalation after a week of air strikes that killed hundreds in Lebanon, including Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
ALSO READ: Israel airstrikes ‘fully-fledged war’ against Lebanon, says ambassador to SA
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