dpa
Tehran/Tel Aviv/Washington
The supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued renewed threats to Iranian arch-enemies Israel and the United States on Saturday, following the recent military confrontations.
“The enemies, whether the Zionist regime or America, will certainly receive a devastating response to what they are doing to Iran and the resistance front,” the 85-year-old Khamenei said at an event in Tehran.
Whether there would be a military response to the Israeli retaliatory attack a week ago initially remained open.
The danger of a major, open war between Iran and Israel recently increased. A week ago, Israel hit Iran with airstrikes in what the country described as retaliation for an Iranian missile attack at the beginning of October.
Afterwards, there were contradictory statements and reports as to whether Iran’s military would respond.
Iran’s so-called Axis of Resistance, an informal alliance of Islamist militant groups backed by Tehran, includes the Lebanese Hezbollah movement and the Palestinian Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, the US has announced the deployment to the Middle East of additional military capabilities amid an escalation in the region.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin “ordered the deployment of additional ballistic missile defense destroyers, fighter squadron and tanker aircraft, and several US Air Force B-52 long-range strike bombers to the region,” Pentagon press secretary Pat Ryder said on Friday.
Combined with the decision to deploy an advanced air defence battery to Israel and reinforcement of US forces to the eastern Mediterranean, the measures are intended to strengthen security in the region and deter a further escalation.
“The reinforcement is to take place in the coming months, while the US aircraft carrier ‘Abraham Lincoln’ and its escort ships are being prepared for withdrawal from the region,” Ryder added.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that airstrikes hit more than 120 militant targets in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon over the past 40 hours.
The Lebanese Health Ministry reported that dozens had been killed in the Israeli strikes on Beirut and eastern Lebanon, while residents of the Lebanese capital described the fallout from repeated Israeli airstrikes as “apocalyptic.” The IDF said weapons depots and rocket launchers belonging to Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon were struck.
“Soldiers continue to carry out limited, locally concentrated, targeted attacks against Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon,” the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said.
The military said separately that two Hezbollah commanders in the area of the Lebanese city of Tyre were killed. They were allegedly responsible for firing more than 400 missiles at Israel in October. The military’s information could not be independently verified.
A missile fired from Lebanon left 11 people injured in Israel when the missile struck a building in the central town of Tira, north-east of Tel Aviv, the Magen David Adom rescue service said.
The Israeli military said that three rockets were fired from Lebanon towards central Israel on Saturday morning.
“Some were intercepted,” IDF said in a Telegram post, adding that “a fallen projectile was most likely identified in the area. Details are under examination.” Air raid sirens had previously sounded in the area.
Videos supposedly showing the impact of a rocket were circulating on social media.
The military later said that it had attacked the rocket launcher used in the attack in Lebanon. By the afternoon, the armed forces had recorded around 80 projectiles fired from Lebanon towards Israel, it said.
On Thursday, seven people were killed after rockets launched from Lebanon hit northern Israel.
The Iranian-backed Hezbollah has continued to strike northern Israel almost daily since the beginning of the Gaza war more than a year ago. Israel responded with massive airstrikes and now a ground offensive. Israel is fighting on several fronts, from Palestinian group Hamas in Gaza to the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon.
