image Photo: Reuters

IRGC vows vengeance against Israel

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) is warning Israel that it will face swift revenge attacks if the IDF continues to target members of the elite force in the Middle East

By Erin Viner

“Be aware that we will not only take part in the funeral of our martyrs, but also immediately take their revenge. This is a real and serious message. If your mischief is repeated, you will once again experience our attacks and suffer the bitter taste of our missile blows,” IRGC Commander-in-Chief Major General Hossein Salami was cited as saying in comments directed at Israel yesterday reported by the semi-official Tasnim news agency.

“In recent weeks you have seen how Zionists are always wrong in their calculations and have been targeted by Revolutionary Guards missiles. We are warning them that they should cease their mischief or we will bury them alive,” added Gen. Salami, speaking in the southwestern Iranian city of Dezful

The IRGC claimed responsibility for attacks on 13 March against what it claimed were “Israeli strategic centers” in the northern Iraq city of Erbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region. The strikes were seen as apparent Iranian retaliation for Israel’s killing of IRGC officers in Syria, a close ally of Iran, in an air strike on 7 March. The Iraqi Kurdish regional government refuted Tehran’s claims – saying that a dozen missiles fired from the Islamic Republic hit “civilian residential areas.”

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group reported that the 7 March IDF air strike was the seventh of its kind in Syria this year, and that the target was a weapons and ammunition depot near the Damascus International Airport.

Israel rarely comments on air strikes in Syria, of which there have been hundreds since the start of that country’s civil war in 2011. Jerusalem has, however, repeatedly stated that it will take any necessary action to prevent Iran from establishing a permanent presence just over Israel’s northern border while also preventing the Islamic Republic from arming its regional proxies.