[AnNahar] Iran said Tuesday the number of its soldiers killed in an air strike in Syria this week had risen to seven and that it would not go unanswered.Iranian media reported that seven bodies had been flown back to Tehran for burial following Monday's strike against the T-4 airbase in Homs.
Syria, Russia and Iran have blamed Israel for the attack, which Tehran had initially said killed four military advisers.
"The Zionist regime's attack on Syria will not go unanswered," said Ali Akbar Velayati, foreign policy adviser to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to the semi-official ISNA news agency.
Iran is a key ally of the Syrian government, alongside Russia, and Velayati was speaking on arrival in Damascus where he was due to meet with Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir
Pencilneckal-Assad
Terror of Aleppo ...
, according to ISNA.
Meanwhile,
...back at the shootout, Butch shot Ike through the elbow.
Take that, Ike!he yelled......
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif hit back at U.S. President Donald Trump
...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States...
, who has said Russia and Iran share the blame for an alleged chemical attack in a rebel-held town in Syria.
Iran "has consistently condemned use of chemical weapons by anyone (and) is itself the victim of their use by Saddam with U.S. support," Zarif wrote on Twitter, referring to chemical attacks during Iran's war with Iraq in the 1980s.
Trump's "threats to repeat impulsive acts of aggression is symptomatic of U.S. policy helping holy warriors," Zarif added.
The U.S. president has threatened a "forceful" response to the alleged chemical attack.
| The Times of Israel adds: |
Israeli officials did not appear to be taking the threat of a retaliatory attack lightly — either by Iran, or its proxy, the Hezbollah terrorist group.
On Tuesday, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman appeared to allude to the strike, saying that Israel “will not allow Iranian entrenchment in Syria. Whatever the cost.”
Keeping in line with Israel’s stance of ambiguity on attacks outside the country’s borders, the defense minister prefaced his remarks with a wry “I don’t know what happened.”
“Accepting Iranian entrenchment in Syria would be to accept Iranians putting a chokehold on us. We cannot allow that,” Liberman said.
In a highly unusual move, Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency acknowledged that “Iranian military advisers” were killed in Monday’s attack on the military airfield.
| Seven IRGC members were killed in the strike, including one high-ranking officer, Col. Mehdi Dehghan, who reportedly served in one of the group’s drone units. |
This appeared to be only the second time that Iran has acknowledged casualties in Syria. The first was in 2015, when an IRGC general was killed in a strike directed against Hezbollah leader Jihad Mughniyeh, which was also attributed to Israel.
In that case, the Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorist group retaliated 10 days later with an ambush, firing anti-tank missiles at two IDF jeeps, killing two soldiers and injuring seven more.
Israel is believed to have carried out numerous raids inside Syria since 2013, targeting the regime and its Lebanese arch-foe Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran.
Iran has deployed thousands of fighters to Syria, presented as "volunteers" from Afghanistan and Pakistain and trained locally by Iranian "military advisers." It denies having a military presence in the war-torn country.