Global - Israel braced on Thursday for the possibility of a retaliatory attack after its suspected killing of Iranian generals in Damascus this week, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the country would harm “whoever harms us or plans to harm us.”
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His comments came after Israel’s armed forces – stretched by nearly six months of war in the Gaza Strip and on the Lebanese front - announced they were suspending leave for all combat units, a day after they said they were mobilizing more troops for air defence units.
The possibility of Iran retaliating for Monday’s presumed Israeli air strike on Iran’s embassy compound in Damascus has raised the specter of a wider war, though two Iranian sources said Tehran’s response would be calibrated to avoid escalation.
“For years, Iran has been acting against us both directly and via its proxies; therefore, Israel is acting against Iran and its proxies, defensively and offensively,” Netanyahu said at the start of a security cabinet meeting late on Thursday.
“We will know how to defend ourselves and we will act according to the simple principle of whoever harms us or plans to harm us, we will harm them,” he said.
The White House said US President Joe Biden spoke with Netanyahu and they discussed Iran’s threats. Biden made clear that the United States strongly supports Israel in the face of that threat, Washington said.
Reuters journalists and residents of Israel’s commercial hub Tel Aviv said GPS services had been disrupted, an apparent measure to help ward off guided missiles.
Iran, Israel’s arch-enemy, has sworn revenge for the killing of two of its generals along with five military advisers in an air strike on an Iranian diplomatic compound in the Syrian capital on Monday.
Israel is believed to have carried out the strike, among the most significant yet on Iranian interests in Tehran’s close ally Syria. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement. Netanyahu made no mention of the attack.
Israel has been pressing its war on Hamas in Gaza since the Palestinian militants led a cross-border killing and kidnapping spree on Oct. 7, and has also been trading fire almost daily with Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Yemen’s Houthis, which are aligned with Tehran, have launched occasional long-range rockets at Israel’s Eilat port.
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