Before the missile attack, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Israelis in a video statement: “We are in the midst of a campaign against Iran’s axis of evil.
“Together we will stand steadfast in the trying days ahead of us. Together we will stand. Together we will fight and together we will win.”
A senior White House official meanwhile told reporters in Washington: “A direct military attack from Iran against Israel will carry severe consequences for Iran.”
In April, Iran launched more than 300 drones and missiles at Israel in retaliation for a deadly strike on the Iranian consulate in Syria that killed several top commanders.
Almost all of them were shot down by Israel, the US and other Western allies and their Arab partners, and an air base in southern Israel sustained only minor damage when it was hit.
Israel responded by launching a missile that hit an Iranian air base.
US officials said earlier that Iran had been ready to launch a new missile attack against Israel on short notice since early August, when it threatened to retaliate for the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. Israel neither confirmed nor denied that it killed Haniyeh.
On Saturday, a day after Hezbollah’s leader was killed in an Israeli air strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei promised that the death of Hassan Nasrallah “shall not go unavenged”.
He gave no details, but said: “The fate of this region will be determined by the forces of resistance, with Hezbollah at the forefront.”
Iran has built a network of allied armed groups across the Middle East, which are all opposed to the US and Israel and sometimes refer to themselves as the “Axis of Resistance”. Besides Hezbollah, they include Hamas in the Palestinian territories, the Houthis in Yemen, and a number of Shia militias in Iraq and Syria.
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