Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Wednesday issued a threat to Israel and said it would “be slapped” after an air strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus which killed seven Revolutionary Guards, two of them generals, and which was blamed on Israel.
“The defeat of the Zionist regime in Gaza will continue and this regime will be close to decline and dissolution,” Khamenei said in a speech to the country’s officials in Tehran, as quoted by AFP.
“Desperate efforts like the one they committed in Syria will not save them from defeat. Of course, they will also be slapped for that action,” he added.
Later on Wednesday, Khamenei also threatened Israel in a post in Hebrew on X, in which he wrote, “With God's help we will make the Zionists regret their crime of aggression against the Iranian consulate in Damascus.”
Israeli diplomatic and defense officials have not commented on the air strikes near the Iranian consulate in Damascus on Monday, but four Israeli officials acknowledged to The New York Times that Israel had carried out the attack.
According to the report, the strikes targeted a secret meeting in which Iranian intelligence officials and Palestinian Arab terrorists gathered to discuss the war in Gaza. Among them were leaders of the Islamic Jihad.
Iran on Tuesday vowed to respond to the strike in Damascus. Iran’s deputy UN ambassador Zahra Ershadi Israel of threatening regional and international peace and declared that “the United States is responsible for all crimes committed by the Israeli regime.”
She said Iran has exercised “considerable restraint” but Israel must now bear “full responsibility” for the consequences of the attack. Iran reserves its rights under international law and the UN Charter “to take decisive response to such reprehensible acts.”
Khamenei often threatens Israel, to which he refers as a “terrorist state”. The Hebrew post on Wednesday marks the third time since the start of the war in Gaza that the Iranian Supreme Leader has threatened Israel in Hebrew.