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A senior commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) warned on February 17 that Iran would carry out a third missile strike against Israel at the “appropriate time”.
Over the past year, Iran launched two strikes with missiles and drones against Israel, in operations it dubbed True Promise 1 and 2, as a result of the war in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.
“The True Promise 3 will be carried out in appropriate time,” said deputy commander-in-chief of the IRGC Brigadier General Ali Fadavi at Tehran’s Amirkabir University of Technology, in remarks carried by Iran’s Mehr news agency.
The senior commander was joined at the university, which was marking the 46th anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, by representatives of the Palestinian Hamas Movement, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthis (Ansar Allah).
Fadavi also briefly touched on the war in Gaza, saying that the ongoing ceasefire and hostage release deal was proof that Israel “lost” against Hamas.
“Zionist regime officials themselves admit that Hamas won and they lost,” the commander said.
In April of last year, Iran launched its first-ever direct attack on Israel, launching some 300 attack drones and missiles in response to the killing of several IRGC members in an airstrike near Tehran’s consulate in the Syrian capital, Damascus.
Later in October, the Islamic Republic launched some 200 ballistic missiles at Israel in retaliation for the assassinations of former Hamas Hezbollah leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Hasan Nasrallah in Iranian capital, Tehran, and the Lebanese capital, Beirut.
Israel retaliated to both strikes by directly attacking targets in Iran. In the second time, Israeli retaliatory strikes hit key components of Iran’s air defense network as well as some rocket and drone manufacturing sites.
Earlier this month, The Washington Post reported that the United States intelligence assessments showed Israel is considering strikes on Iran’s nuclear program, and that the attacks could come as soon as mid-year.
Tensions between the two foes increased earlier this week when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that his country “can and will finish the job” against Tehran’s “axis of terror.” The remarks were widely seen as a threat to the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.
While Fadavi’s warning appears to be serious, Iran will not likely move first against Israel. Still, the country could take action if it felt that an attack on its nuclear facilities was unavoidable.
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