TEHRAN – A top Iranian general has warned that the Resistance Front will give Israel a “fundamental response” after press reports suggested that an oil tanker off the Syrian coast may have been targeted by a drone. 

“Zionists think they can target the Syrian soil constantly and conduct acts of mischief in various places and in the sea without receiving a response,” Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Mohammad Hossein Baqeri said on Sunday.

“The measures taken in the recent days and the future measures that would threaten their (Israel’s) interests will definitely bring them to their senses, and the future of the resistance front is bright,” he continued, according to Tasnim.

The top general refrained from commenting on the perpetrator of the recent incident but warned that that “the Resistance Front will give a fundamental response to the Zionists.”

Responding to questions about Iran’s response to continued hostile actions by the Israeli regime against Iran, the general said Iran’s response would not be made known now but added that the Zionist regime will not stay “calm”.

The Syrian Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources said in a statement on Saturday that an oil tanker off the Syrian coast caught fire that is thought to be caused by a drone attack. 

The ministry said in a statement that a fire that erupted in one of the tanks of the oil tanker is believed to be an attack by a drone coming from the direction of Lebanese territorial waters, according to Syrian state news SANA.

The statement of the Syrian Ministry did not mention the party involved in the attack on the oil tanker, while Arab media suggested that the drone that attacked the Syrian oil tanker was Israeli, according to Al-Alam.  

Last week on Thursday, Israel targeted a suburb of Damascus with missiles, prompting Syria to call on the UN to condemn the hostile repeated acts against sovereignty of the Syrian Arab Republic.

“Israeli occupation forces, at 1:38 a.m. on Thursday, April 22nd, 2021, launched a new missile aggression from the direction of the occupied Syrian Golan on the lands of Syria which targeted some regions in the surroundings of Damascus in a blatant violation of the Agreement on Disengagement of 1974,” Syria’s Foreign and Expatriates Ministry said in a statement.

The statement added that Syria calls on the UN, particularly Security Council to condemn the Israeli cowardly attack and the repeated hostile acts against sovereignty of Syria perpetrated by the three occupiers “Israel, U.S. and Turkey” in a systematized manner. 

Iran condemns Israeli atrocities against Palestinians

Iran’s Foreign Ministry condemned on Saturday the Zionist regime and Israeli settlers’ atrocities against residents of al-Quds after Israeli police and far-right extremists attacked Palestinian residents of the occupied Jerusalem (al-Quds).

In a statement on Saturday, Saeed Khatibzadeh, spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, condemned the Zionist regime and Israeli settlers’ atrocities against residents of al-Quds, calling for an immediate end to their savage acts.

“Stop crimes against Palestinian people and residents of al-Quds,” said Khatibzadeh on Saturday night.

He praised resistance by Palestinians, especially the residents and youths in al-Quds, against criminal Zionists, urging the international community to take action to halt the Israeli regime’s anti-human rights moves against defenseless Palestinians and Israel’s aggression against holy sites in al-Quds.

Khatibzadeh touched upon Israel’s continued occupation and crimes against Palestinian people and emphasized the necessity of supporting the resistance front until Palestine is liberated.

“The Palestinian land belongs to Palestinian people, and the Israeli regime is a usurper and occupying regime, and the only way to settle the Palestinian crisis is to hold a referendum among the real residents of Palestinian territories,” he pointed out.

Palestinian residents of the occupied East Jerusalem have taken to the streets to protest Israel's mistreatment, after the Israeli police set up bans on public gatherings during the holy month of Ramadan, which Palestinians celebrate by holding congregational prayers.

Israeli authorities also paved the way for extremist far-right Jews to stage anti-Arab marches. These extremists marched in the occupied Jerusalem chanting provocative slogans such as “death to Arabs,” something that enraged Palestinians and prompted them to launch what some observers called another Intifada which soon spread to other parts of Palestine, including the Gaza strip.

The Presidency of Palestine has strongly condemned the growing incitement by extremist far-right Israeli settler groups advocating for the killing of Arabs, which in recent days manifested in a wave of attacks against Palestinian civilians in the Old City of occupied East Jerusalem, according to Palestinian news WAFA.

The Presidency said in a statement on Thursday that “East Jerusalem is the eternal capital of Palestine and is a red line”, calling on the international community to protect the Palestinian people from the ongoing settler attacks, which it said were encouraged by the Israeli government.

Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank continued their demonstrations against the Israeli regime on Sunday. WAFA reported that three Palestinian youths sustained gunfire injuries early on Sunday morning during clashes with the Israeli occupation army in the village of Al-Lubban ash-Sharqiya, to the south of Nablus city in the occupied West Bank.

The Israeli army reportedly raided the village and attacked hundreds of protesters taking part in a protest against the ongoing Israeli escalation in the occupied Jerusalem using live gunfire, teargas and stun grenades, injuring three of them and causing many cases of suffocation from gas inhalation, the Palestinian news agency said. 

It added that clashes also erupted in many areas of the occupied West Bank on Saturday night against the backdrop of the ongoing Israeli daily assaults on Palestinian worshipers attending prayers at Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem, which have escalated since the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan.

 “The world is witnessing a new Intifada” 

Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, the special aide to the speaker of the Iranian Parliament on international affairs, praised the Palestinian Intifada, underlining the necessity for all Muslims around the globe to defend the al-Aqsa Mosque as the first Qibla of Muslims. 

“These days, the world is witnessing a new Intifada of the men, women and youth of Jerusalem against the crimes of the Zionists and the defense of religious sanctities and human values,” the Iranian diplomat said.

He expressed Iran’s support for the Palestinian people and condemned the violence by Zionist armed forces and settlers against the oppressed people of Palestine.

He also praised the Resistance’s missile response to Israel, saying that this response is the beginning of changing the equation to the favor of the Palestinian people.

A mysterious missile coming from Syria landed in the vicinity of Israel’s top-secret nuclear facility of Dimona on Thursday, setting off air raid sirens and causing Israeli officials to give conflicting reports on what happened near the nuclear facility.

The Israeli military identified the projectile as an SA-5 surface-to-air missile fired by Syrian forces against Israeli aircraft. An Israeli military spokesman admittedly said that the missile reached the Dimona area, 200 km (125 miles) south of the Syrian border.

Although the spokesman said the missile did not hit the reactor and exploded some 30 km (19 miles) away, the fact that a missile flew from Syrian territories all the way to Israel’s secretive nuclear reactor raised alarm bells in Tel Aviv, prompting Israeli officials to acknowledge their failure in intercepting the missile.

Israeli War Minister Benny Gantz said Israel's anti-missile systems had attempted to intercept the SA-5 but were unsuccessful.

A few days later, the armed wings of the Palestinian resistance groups in Gaza launched a barrage of rockets against Israeli targets bordering the strip as the Israeli army bombed Palestinian sites in Gaza. The Palestinian resistance said they will not leave their fellow Palestinians in East Jerusalem struggling alone against the Israeli regime. The recent rockets that were launched from Gaza were a response to Israeli mistreatment of Palestinian residents of al-Quds.