Amid heightened tensions in the Middle East after the killing of top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani by the US, Israel on Wednesday warned that it would inflict a “resounding blow” if attacked by arch foe Tehran.
“We’re standing steadfast against those who seek to kill us. We’re standing with determination and with force. Whoever tries to attack us will receive a resounding blow in return,” Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu said after Iran launched a salvo retaliatory missile strikes on bases used by US troops in Iraq.
Netanyahu has described the commander of the Islamic republic’s Quds Force, General Qasem Soleimani as a “terrorist-in-chief”.
General Qasem Soleimani was among the eight people killed in a rocket attack by the US on Baghdad international airport early on Friday.
The White House in a statement had said that at the direction of the President, the US military took a “decisive defensive action to protect US personnel abroad” by killing Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force, a US-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.
It added that the Iran General was “actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region”.
Meanwhile, world leaders have condemned the Iranian missile strikes, which targeted the sprawling Ain al-Asad airbase in western Iraq and a base in Arbil, both housing American and other foreign troops deployed as part of a US-led coalition fighting the remnants of the Islamic State group.