Israeli military chief Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi said they would strike Iran “very, very hard” if it made the “mistake of launching another missile barrage at Israel”.
“If Iran makes the mistake and launches another barrage of missiles at Israel, we will once again know how to reach Iran, reach even with capabilities that we did not use this time, and hit very, very hard both the capabilities and places that we spared this time,” he told the military personnel who took part in the weekend strike.
Halevi also said that certain targets in Iran had been set aside “because we may be required to do this again”. “This event is not over; we are still in the midst of it.”
Israeli fighter jets on Saturday attacked Iranian military targets and missile production facilities in retaliation for a major ballistic missile attack by Tehran earlier this month.
In Lebanon, Israeli tanks entered the outskirts of the village of Khiam, their deepest incursion yet in the ground operation they launched against Iran-backed Hezbollah last month.
Hezbollah on Tuesday also announced that it has chosen deputy head Naim Qassem to succeed Hassan Nasrallah as the group’s chief. Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli strike on south Beirut last month.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said that Qassem was a “temporary appointment” who would not last for long. In a post on X in Hebrew, he said that the “countdown has begun”.
Israel and Hezbollah have been fighting across the Lebanese border since the war in Gaza erupted after Hamas attacked Israeli towns on October 7 last year.
In Gaza, an Israeli air strike on a single residential block killed nearly 100 people on Tuesday.
The bombing came a day after Israel banned UNRWA, the main United Nations aid agency working with Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
