BICOM

The Iranian government held a ceremony in Tehran yesterday to mark the tenth anniversary of the assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, a senior Hezbollah commander in charge of relations with Iran and global operations.

Mughniyah was killed in a targeted explosion when a bomb was detonated as he sat in his jeep in a quiet residential district of Damascus. The assassination was thought to be a joint Mossad and CIA operation but was never formally acknowledged by either organisation.

Speaking at the ceremony, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds force, Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani,  threatened to “wipe out the Zionist entity.” “This regime (Israel) is not going to survive. The measures of this mercenary regime show that it is not permanent, as there are no factors or signs of permanence in the (Zionist) regime,” he said.

In reference to last weekend’s confrontation with Israel, when an Iranian drone violated Israeli airspace and Israel responded with air strikes on Iranian bases in Syria, Soleimani said the “horror, the lunatic struggles and the futile (military) operations” explain Israel’s “vain last-ditch attempts.” He claimed that Israel lives in palpable fear thanks to the work of Imad Mughniyeh and other “martyrs” in Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine and that Mughniyeh was the one who “forced” Israel’s army to withdraw from southern Lebanon in 2000. He further praised him for “fortifying the Gaza Strip,” where the terror group Hamas holds sway.

Also in attendance at the ceremony in Tehran was Hamas Politburo Deputy chief Saleh al-Arouri, who was seen alongside Soleimani and Ali Akbar Velayati, a top aide to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Nabil Qaouk, a top Hezbollah official. As part of the rapprochement between Hamas and Iran, Arouri has now travelled to Iran four times in the past few months to meet with senior officials.