(Al Jazeera Media Network) Israel will face “a crushing response from the axis of resistance,” the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hossein Salami, has told Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, according to state media.
Salami made the statement on Thursday after unprecedented attacks in the previous two days targeting Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies, which killed 37 people and wounded more than 2,900 when hundreds of devices were detonated almost simultaneously.
The “axis of resistance” refers to Iran-aligned armed groups in the Middle East, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthis, and Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces.
Lebanon and Hezbollah have blamed Israel for the attacks on Tuesday and Wednesday. Israel has not directly commented on the blasts, but security sources said they were probably carried out by its Mossad spy agency.
“Such terrorist acts are undoubtedly the result of the Zionist regime’s despair and successive failures. This will soon be met with a crushing response from the axis of resistance, and we will witness the destruction of this bloodthirsty and criminal regime,” Salami said in his message to Nasrallah.
Iran and Israel frequently exchange threats of mutual destruction. Their hostilities peaked in April when Iran launched drones and missiles in its first direct attack against Israel in response to a deadly Israeli strike on its embassy in Syria, which killed 13 people.
Tensions ratcheted up again in July when, within hours of one another, Israel killed Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut, and Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in Tehran after attending President Masoud Pezeshkian’s inauguration.
Many expected those killings might trigger a wider regional war, but so far, no major response has been forthcoming.
In a speech on Thursday, his first since this week’s attacks in Lebanon, Nasrallah said the blasts targeting Hezbollah members are “a declaration of war”, and he promised retaliation without giving a timeline for a response.