MOHSEN Rezaei, a former chief commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), has warned that the Israeli regime’s targeted killings of resistance commanders are only accelerating its own demise.
Rezaei made the remarks during a funeral ceremony held in honour of the dead in the southeastern city of Kerman on Monday.
He said the Israeli regime ‘imagines it can advance its agenda through assassinations,’ and that by striking Lebanese and Iranian commanders it can force nations into submission.
However, ‘In reality… with every commander it assassinates, it takes one more step towards its own demise.’
Rezaei, currently a member of Iran’s Expediency Council, pointed out that resistance leaders do not represent governments or states. ‘These commanders belong to nations, to the oppressed. Their martyrdom therefore cannot be meaningless for the peoples.’
His remarks followed Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah’s official confirmation of the assassination of its senior commander, Haytham Ali Tabatabai, and four other members of the group, in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Rezaei stressed that despite relentless Israeli pressure, the Axis of Resistance in Lebanon ‘is today stronger than during the era of Martyr Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah,’ referring to Hezbollah’s former revered secretary general, who was killed in an Israeli attack on the Lebanese capital last year.
Rezaei went on to laud the Iranian nation for their numerous instances of historic resistance in the face of foreign aggression.
He continued: ‘Without such sacrifices, Iran would have faced the fate of countries occupied during the First and Second World Wars.’
The veteran commander, meanwhile, highlighted Kerman’s symbolic place in regional geopolitics, noting it as the city from which General Qassem Soleimani, former commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force, had hailed.
He credited the Iranian resistance and steadfastness for inspiring the decades-long acts of resistance that have been taking place throughout the region, including in Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen.
Meanwhile on Monday, following Haytham Ali Tabatabai’s assassination the previous day, the Israeli army launched a large-scale military exercise in the occupied Golan Heights, announcing in a statement that it had begun the two-day drills, dubbed ‘Shield of Strength’.
According to the statement, the exercise started with ‘a Chief of Staff test as part of a headquarters exercise.’
The Israeli military’s Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir visited ‘the 210th ‘Bashan’ Regional Division,’ which is responsible for the border between the occupied territories and Syria in the Golan Heights and the Mount Dov area on the border with Lebanon.
Zamir instructed Israeli forces to ‘increase their level of alertness’ following Ali Tabatabai’s killing.
Hezbollah stated that Tabatabai’s assassination would inspire renewed hope and determination among resistance fighters, promising to continue the struggle against the ‘Zionist enemy and its patron, America.’
The military exercises in Syria also come after last week’s visit by Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the buffer zone in southern Syria, which separates the occupied Golan Heights from the rest of the country, where he met troops stationed on Syrian land Israel has occupied for months.
Israel has conducted repeated acts of aggression across the Syrian territory following the collapse of former President Bashar al-Assad’s government last year. Netanyahu has ordered his forces to push deeper into Syria and seize several strategic locations.
The Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)-led regime took control of Damascus and declared an end to President Bashar al-Assad’s rule last December.
- The life of the Secretary-General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Ahmad Sa’adat, is in danger following a beating he endured in Israeli prisons, a Palestinian prisoners’ advocacy group has warned.
Abdullah al-Zaghari, the head of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society, stated that 72-year-old Sa’adat experienced ‘severe beating’ while being transferred from Megiddo Prison in the northern part of the Israeli-occupied territories to Gilboa Prison in the south.
Al-Zaghari said: ‘Sa’adat’s health condition is difficult, and the Israeli assaults pose a threat to his life.’
Zaghari stated that the assault on Sa’adat is part of the continued targeting of Palestinian leaders, carried out under the directives of Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir.
He said: ‘Israeli policies pose a threat to Sa’adat’s life and the lives of all leaders of the prisoners’ movement, who are subjected to brutal assaults despite the ceasefire agreement in Gaza.’
Zaghari called for ‘providing protection for the detainees, who are living under extremely harsh and oppressive conditions.’
Sa’adat has been held in an Israeli prison since 2006, serving a 30-year sentence on trumped-up charges of involvement in the 2001 assassination of Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi.
Sa’adat has been subjected to repeated raids on his isolation cell, degrading searches, and physical violence.
His family said he’d earlier suffered from scabies and faced severe mistreatment in Israeli prisons.
In March, he was assaulted during his transfer from Ramon Prison to Megiddo Prison and left for hours in the prison yard with his hands bound and his head covered.
Palestinian prisoners have repeatedly engaged in prolonged hunger strikes as a form of protest against their unjust imprisonment.
Israel persists in breaching the rights and freedoms guaranteed to detainees under the Fourth Geneva Convention and international law.
The Palestine Detainees Studies Centre states that approximately 60 per cent of Palestinian abductees held illegally in Israeli prisons endure chronic illnesses.
A significant number have lost their lives either while imprisoned or shortly after their release, due to the severity of their medical conditions.
- The head of the Hamas Movement in Gaza, Khalil al-Hayya, has called on ‘the Islamic nation, its charitable institutions and scholars,’ to assume their responsibilities in strengthening the resilience of the Palestinian people and accelerating the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, so that it remains ‘a steadfast fortress for the nation on the path to liberation.’
Al-Hayya warned of the scale of threats facing the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem amid increasing incursions and attempts to impose temporal and spatial division.
He affirmed that the ‘Al-Aqsa Flood’ battle brought about a significant shift in global awareness, contributing to breaking the Zionist narrative, expanding international solidarity with Palestine, and reinforcing the unity of the Muslim nation in confronting the dangers surrounding it.
Al-Hayya’s remarks came in a recorded speech delivered at the general assembly of Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan, held in the city of Lahore and attended by scholars, leaders, and politicians from several Islamic countries.
In his speech, al-Hayya expressed Hamas’s deep appreciation for Pakistan, its leadership, people, and army, recalling the support of founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who rejected granting any legitimacy to Israel on the land of Palestine.
