While violent disturbances on the border fence with the Gaza Strip simmer, in contrast with the two previous clashes, there is a heightened state of alert in northern Israel, ahead of a potential Iranian retaliation for the air strike in Syria that Moscow, Damascus and Tehran ascribed to the Jewish state. The Iranian supreme Leader’s envoy to the Islamic republic’s revolutionary gaurs elite Quds Force threatened Jerusalem that “if Israel wants to continue its treacherous existence,” as he put it, “it should avoid stupid measures that will grant an excuse to Iran to destroy Haifa and Tel Aviv.” The Supreme Leader’s envoy cleric Ali Shirazi further asserted that “Iran has the capability to destroy Israel.” With regard to a possible attack against the Assad regime by the US-led coalition that will seek to punish Syrian President Bashar Assad for a suspected chemical weapons attack against a rebel-held town last week, Iran vowed to support Damascus against any foreign aggression. In a statement by the top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader Ali Akbar Velayati, Tehran joined Moscow’s threats to the West, in which it vowed that any strike against Syria would “not remain without a response.”
In response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s statement, in which he stressed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a phone conversation that “Syrian sovereignty should be respected and that actions that were liable to increase the country’s instability and endanger its security must be avoided;” A senior Israeli official stressed that “the core factor that destabilizes Syria is in fact Iran that attempts to militarily entrench itself in Syria to threaten Israel and other countries.” The statement followed another threat by Israel, in which a senior member of the country’s defense establishment warned that “No memory of Syrian President Bashar Assad or his regime will remain, if a wider war breaks out between Israel and Iran in the Syrian theater.”