Amid an ongoing offensive in Gaza and Lebanon, the Israeli military warned Iran on Tuesday that it would be hit “very, very seriously” if it retaliates against last week’s Israeli attack on Tehran.
Here are the highlights of the Israel-Iran-Hezbollah conflict:
- Israel’s chief of military staff, Lieutenant General Hezi Halevi, said they would hit Iran “very, very hard” if it “makes the mistake of firing missiles at Israel again.”
- “If Iran makes a mistake and fires another round of missiles at Israel, we will again know how to get to Iran, even with the capabilities we didn’t use this time, and hit our capabilities and our locations very, very hard. This time it was spared,” he told military personnel participating in the weekend strike.
- Halevi also said that some of Iran’s goals have been put on hold “because we may need to do it again.” “This incident is not over yet; we are still in the midst of it.”
- Israeli fighter jets struck Iranian military targets and missile production facilities on Saturday in retaliation for a major ballistic missile attack by Tehran earlier this month.
- In Lebanon, Israeli tanks entered the outskirts of the village of Khiyam, their deepest incursion yet in a ground campaign they launched last month against Iran-backed Hezbollah.
- Hezbollah also announced on Tuesday that it had chosen deputy leader Naeem Qasim to succeed Hassan Nasrallah as the group’s leader. Nasrallah was killed last month in an Israeli attack in southern Beirut.
- Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant said Qasim was a “temporary appointment” and would not serve permanently. “The countdown has begun,” he said in a post on HebrewX.
- Israel and Hezbollah have been fighting on the Lebanese border since the Gaza war broke out on October 7 last year after Hamas attacked Israeli towns.
- On Tuesday, an Israeli airstrike on a residential area in Gaza killed nearly 100 people.
- The blast came a day after Israel banned UNRWA, the main U.N. aid agency working with Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.