Iran vows response to Israel's killing of Guards general in Beirut

TEHRAN: Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Sunday (Sep 29) that the death of a senior Iranian general, killed alongside Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli strike on Beirut, "will not go unanswered".

Araghchi's remarks came two days after the Friday strike on Iran-backed Hezbollah's bastion in the Lebanese capital that killed General Abbas Nilforoushan, a top commander of the Quds Force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps foreign operations arm.

"This horrible crime of the aggressor Zionist regime will not go unanswered," the top diplomat said according to a foreign ministry statement.

"The diplomatic apparatus will also use all its political, diplomatic, legal and international capacities to pursue the criminals and their supporters," he added.

Iranian officials have strongly condemned the killing of Hezbollah chief Nasrallah, whose powerful Lebanese movement has been armed and financed by the Islamic republic for years.

On Sunday, Iran's vice president for strategic affairs, Javad Zarif, said a response "will occur at the appropriate time and at Iran's choice, and decisions will definitely be made at the leadership level, at the highest level of the state", official news agency IRNA reported.

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say in all matters of state, has offered his condolences for Nasrallah's "martyrdom" and declared five days of public mourning.

Iranians on Sunday took to the streets of several cities across the country to express their anger at the killings of the Guards' Nilforoushan as well as Hezbollah's Nasrallah.

The secretary of Iran's Guardian Council, Ahmad Jannati, said Israel will "receive a forceful answer", threatening with "the destruction of the Zionist regime," according to Fars news agency.