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Iran: Israeli strike on Beirut ‘dangerous game-changing escalation’
Iran’s embassy in Lebanon says Israel’s major attack on Beirut’s southern suburbs represents a “dangerous game-changing escalation” that will “bring its perpetrator an appropriate punishment”.
Earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the UN General Assembly the “long arm of Israel” can reach the “tyrants of Tehran” anywhere in Iran and the Middle East.
An anti-Israeli government protest in Iran’s capital Tehran on Friday
Hezbollah pledges to keep fighting until Israel stops its war on Gaza
Not long before the attack, thousands of Lebanese massed in another part of Beirut’s suburbs for the funeral of three Hezbollah members killed in earlier bombing raids, including the head of the group’s drone unit, Mohammed Surur.
Men and women in the giant crowd waved their fists in the air and chanted, “We will never accept humiliation” as they marched behind the three coffins, wrapped in the group’s yellow flag.
Hussein Fadlallah, Hezbollah’s top official in Beirut, said in a speech no matter how many commanders Israel kills, the group has endless numbers of experienced fighters deployed all over the front lines.
Fadlallah pledged that Hezbollah will keep fighting until Israel stops its bloody war on Gaza: “We will not abandon the support of Palestine, Jerusalem and oppressed Gaza. There is no place for neutrality in this battle.”
Israeli government ‘drunk on power and impunity’
The Israelis are drunk on power and drunk on victory and addicted to American support. This fascist, fanatic Israeli government has really exceeded all expectations.
What they’ve done in Gaza, they’re doing in Lebanon. They are acting with total impunity. If they are capable of genocide in Gaza, they’re capable of what they’ve done today.
And clearly, they don’t care for the reactions, implications, or ramifications of their bombardment of civilian or residential neighbourhoods, regardless of the pretext. What we’ve seen from the Israeli government is bomb first, explain later.
‘Barbaric crimes’: Iran, Yemen see mass protests condemning Israel
Tens of thousands of people protested in Iran and Yemen to condemn Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Gaza.
Demonstrators in Tehran and other Iranian cities responded to a call by authorities to rally in support of Hezbollah in Lebanon “and to condemn the barbaric crimes of the Zionist regime in Palestine”, the official IRNA news agency said.
Protesters carried portraits of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, as well as Palestinian and Hezbollah flags. “Israel is destroyed. Lebanon is victorious,” they chanted, deploring “a bloodbath in Lebanon”.
In the Yemeni capital Sanaa, tens of thousands of chanting protesters waved rifles and placards.
“We say to our brothers in Lebanon that you will be victorious, God willing,” said Houthi supporter Mortada al-Mutawkil. “This war is not the first nor the last with the Israeli enemy. But God willing, it will be more painful for Israel than the 2006 war.”
Beirut attack could prove to be ‘a very dangerous turn’
Sami Nader, director of the Levant Institute for Strategic Affairs, says the Beirut attack could lead to “a very dangerous turn” in the Middle East.
“This will have the potential to become not only a full-blown war between Lebanon and Israel but drag the whole region into a full-scale war,” he told Al Jazeera. “I don’t think Iran will stay out as the most important asset [Hezbollah] it has in the Mediterranean, and in the region, is at stake.”
He said that “the Houthis in Yemen, Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria would lend a hand to Iran.”
A car sits in a hole at the site of the Israeli air raid on Beirut on Friday
