TEHRAN – The Iranian Defense Minister has said Israel’s Saturday attack against Iran did not diminish the country’s military capabilities, adding that Tehran can repeat its April and October operations against the regime over and over again. 

“Iran can launch dozens of retaliatory operations like Operation True Promise,” Brigadier General Aziz Nasirzadeh told reporters on Wednesday. 

Elsewhere in his remarks, Nasirzadeh roundly refuted rumors that Israel had managed to enter Iran’s airspace. He also dismissed reports claiming that a military site in Iran’s northern city of Shahrud was damaged by Israeli missiles fired from a northern neighbor’s territory. 

“The enemy tried to damage our offensive and defensive system but did not achieve much success because we had passive defense measures in place [in advance],” he added. 

Nasirzadeh was also quoted by an Iranian lawmaker as saying that Iran will be responding to Israel. "Whenever the airspace of a country is violated, that country will be entitled to respond to the violation and act of aggression. Even if the Zionist regime shoots an arrow at our country, Iran would not forgive it and it would surely respond," he allegedly said. 

Another top Iranian military official highlighted Iran’s resolve to respond to Israel’s attack on Wednesday. Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, the Coordinating Deputy of the Islamic Republic of the Iranian Army highlighted the significance of Iran maintaining deterrence. 

Alluding to an earlier command from the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Sayyari added: "Iran needs to be fortified in all aspects so that no foreign adversary considers plotting against the Iranian nation."

The strong assertions of Iran’s senior commanders did not go unnoticed by the American government. Pentagon spokesman Patrick Ryder told reporters on Tuesday that “we must be ready for all possibilities. If Iran takes any action against Israel, we are committed to defending Israel."

Since October 2023, West Asia has faced persistent waves of Israeli aggression which have devastated Gaza, displaced a significant portion of Lebanon's population, and resulted in over 46,000 civilian casualties.

Further escalating the tensions in the early hours of Saturday, Israeli warplanes used Iraqi airspace to launch long-range ballistic missiles at Iran's military installations, causing minimal damage to some radar systems. 

Iran promptly restored these systems to full operational capacity but the aggression resulted in the martyrdom of four Army personnel and one civilian. 

Israel’s attack against Iran came 25 days after Iran launched a volley of ballistic missiles at military positions inside the occupied territories. The offensive dubbed Operation True Promise II was a response to the regime’s killing of Hamas’ Ismail Haniyeh in July and Hezbollah’s Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah in September. A high-ranking IRGC commander lost his life alongside Nasrallah. 

Iran directly attacked Israel for the first time in April, after the regime struck its embassy in Damascus. 

‘Iran’s air defense surprised Israel’ 

There has not been much detail on how Iran managed to successfully fend off Israel’s Saturday assault. The Iranian defense minister has only said that Tehran was fully prepared for the attack.   

According to former MI6 officer Alistair Crook, Iranian air defense systems were more successful than expected. 

“The [Israeli] aircraft were supposed to destroy the air defenses both in Iraq and Syria on the way and then to do that in Iran so that the second and third waves would come in with Conventional Weapons to destroy the targets [in Iran.],” he said during a discussion on YouTube. 

Crooke revealed that the supposed second and third waves of attacks were never carried out, because Israelis were met by an unknown air defense system operating from inside Iran.