Iran vows revenge against Israel after deadly Syria strikes
As tensions escalated, Iran's promise of vengeance was also coupled with a pledge to further bolster Syria's defenses against Israel.
TEHRAN — Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) declared on Tuesday its intent to avenge the killing of two Iranian officers in Israeli air raids in Syria last week.
"The Zionists do know what happened to them in the past few hours," declared Brig. Gen. Ramezan Sharif at a televised news conference in Tehran on Tuesday. Sharif did not elaborate on the nature of that response but hinted that it had begun and promised it will continue in the future as well.
Syria's state media said the latest of such Israeli strikes — the fourth in less than a week— occurred Tuesday morning. One of the targets, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, was an Iranian complex outside Damascus.
Hours after Sharif's comments, Iranian authorities staged a funeral in Tehran for the two officers, identified as Meghdad Mehghani and Milad Heidari. The pair have been described as "military advisers" in Syria — a term Iranian officials apply to soldiers who have been on the ground throughout the Syrian civil war to shore up Tehran's ally, Bashar al-Assad, and prevent a government collapse.
