Iranian Regime Spokesman Repeats Threat to ‘Punish’ Israel for Syria Air Base Strike
by Algemeiner Staff
Iran’s Foreign Ministry warned on Monday that Israel should “sooner or later” expect retaliation for its alleged strike on an Iranian military base earlier last week.
“Israel will receive the required responses sooner or later,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi declared at his weekly briefing with journalists in Tehran.
“They cannot take (such) an action and be exempt from punishment,” Qasemi said.
Israeli F-15 jets reportedly bombed the T-4 airbase near Homs in Syria in the early hours of April 9, killing seven Iranian military officials who were located there.
Israel had previously accused the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad of allowing Iran to set up a complex at the T-4 base to supply arms to its Lebanese Shi’ite proxy Hezbollah.
Qasemi’s warning on Monday followed a similar threat last week against Israel issued by the top adviser to the Tehran regime’s “supreme leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Speaking during a visit to Damascus, Ali Akbar Velayati said the attack on the T-4 based was “Israel‘s crime” that would “not remain without response.”
Also on Monday,, Qasemi excoriated the bombing of Syrian chemical weapons facilities by US, British and French aircraft early on Saturday morning.
‘The US expansionist policies have proved in the past that Washington uses false claims and pretexts for taking such steps in various countries, and it is likely that Washington repeats the conduct,” Qasemi said, in a reference to the Iraq war of 2003.
He also speculated that Saturday’s attack was ruse by the US “to create a rift among Iran, Russia and Turkey” and thereby wreck ongoing talks on Syria’s political future sponsored by the three countries.