Iran and allies planning more attacks on Israel, warns armed forces chief

Tehran’s renewed threat comes after Hezbollah claims to have fired over 300 rockets at northern Israel on Sunday

Iran and its allies are planning more attacks on Israel, the chief of staff of Tehran’s armed forces warned on Monday.
Tehran’s renewed threat came after Hezbollah claimed to have fired over 300 rockets at northern Israel on Sunday in retaliation for the killing of one of its commanders.
Israel in return said it sent 100 fighter jets to attack thousands of rockets in Lebanon in a preemptive strike.
Major General Mohammad Bagheri said: “The blood of Martyr Ismail Haniyeh will definitely be avenged by the Axis of Resistance and the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
He emphasised that the retaliation would come from multiple fronts, saying: “The Islamic Republic of Iran will determine its course of action for revenge, while the Axis of Resistance will carry out its own independent and separate response, as we saw yesterday.”
Nasser Kanaani, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, said that despite the “comprehensive support of states like the United States, Israel could not predict the time and place of a limited and managed response by the resistance”.
Mr Kanaani said Israel now had to defend itself inside its territory, showing how the “strategic balances have undergone fundamental changes” in the region. Israel had lost its “deterrence power”, he claimed.
Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, also threatened Israel, saying his country’s response to the assassination of the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last month is “definitive, and will be measured and well calculated”.
“We do not fear escalation, yet do not seek it – unlike Israel,” he said.
Hezbollah’s attack on Sunday did little damage inside Israel, with one Navy soldier killed by what appeared to be shrapnel from an Iron Dome missile that intercepted a drone.
Daniel Hagari, an Israel Defense Forces spokesman, also dismissed the claim by Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, that rockets had hit major Israeli military bases, saying most of them either “fell on their way to Israeli territory, landed in open areas, or were intercepted by air force defence systems and Navy ships”.
Mr Hagari added: “Approximately 90 per cent of the targets struck were short-range rockets aimed at northern Israel. Hezbollah managed to launch only about 230 rockets and over 20 drones.”
Meanwhile, ceasefire talks between Hamas and Israel finished on Sunday. “Some progress” had been made, an Israeli official told The Telegraph.
“The fact that a lower level working team stayed in Cairo to continue talks shows a willingness to get this deal done,” the official said.
While the main sticking point is still the Philadelphi Corridor, the official believed it would be possible to make some compromises on the level of Israeli control over the buffer zone.
“We hope that the high-level delegations will resume talks next week,” the official said.
Hamas, however, poured cold water on the prospects of a deal on Sunday, saying that it had rejected the most recent demands put forward by Israel in Cairo.
Despite not directly participating in the ceasefire talks, Hamas was physically present in Cairo, with messages being passed back and forth between mediators and the terror group.
Hezbollah has stated repeatedly that it will stop its daily attacks on Israel if a ceasefire is reached in Gaza, giving Jerusalem as well as the US, Qatar and Egypt, an even bigger incentive to reach a deal.