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Iran’s army chief: Keep the Zionists out of Syria

“It is unacceptable that the Zionist regime attacks Syria every time it wants,” General Mohammad Bagheri said during a press conference in Damascus.

Iran’s military chief of staff stated Wednesday morning that strikes launched at will by the Israel Air Force on Syrian targets could no longer be tolerated, in what appeared to be a warning that Israel’s next attack would be responded to with force.

“It is unacceptable that the Zionist regime attacks Syria every time it wants,” General Mohammad Hossein Bagheri said during a press conference in Damascus.

Speaking alongside his Syrian counterpart, General Ali Abdullah Ayyoub, Bagheri’s comments came on the heels of a strike carried out by Israeli jets Monday morning on a Syrian aerial facility. The Israeli attack was in response to Syria’s launching of a surface-to-air missile at Israeli F-16 planes as the Israel Air Force was conducting a routine reconnaissance mission in Lebanese air space.

During the press conference, the two military chiefs told journalists that Syria and Iran were consolidating ties and stood in solidarity against Israel.

“We are in Damascus to be emphatic, for the sake of coordination and for the sake of cooperation in order to fight back against our shared enemies, whether they are Zionists or terrorists,” added Bagheri during his rare visit.

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“We discussed ways to strengthen future relationships and we outlined the fundamental parameters of this cooperation,” he continued.

Bagheri’s display of unity with Syria comes just a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman met in Jerusalem with the latter’s Russian counterpart, Sergey Shoigu, to reiterate that Israel will not tolerate Iranian military entrenchment in Syria.

“Iran has to understand that Israel will not allow this,” Netanyahu said during the meeting with Shoygu, whose country continues to act as the chief patron of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

Israeli leaders have held numerous meetings with Russian dignitaries and top military brass in a bid to coordinate operational movements and prevent unintended skirmishes between Israeli and Russian forces.

The IDF frequently undertakes measures in Syria, which has been embroiled in a violent civil war for the past six years, and in Lebanon in order to destroy weapons convoys heading to Tehran’s terror proxies, such as Hezbollah, which Israel fears would be used against it in the next round of hostilities.

By: World Israel News Staff