2024-04-14 16:10:18
ATTA KENARE
Protesters wave Iranian and Palestinian flags in Tehran, April 14, 2024
Atta Kenare
One day after the attack launched by Iran against Israel, the population of the Islamic Republic oscillated, this Sunday (14), between fear of escalation and pride in their country’s military capabilities.
The drone and missile attack targeted two military centers involved in launching a bombing attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria, on April 1.
Tehran accused Israel of the attack, in which seven members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) died, two of them generals of the Quds Force, its foreign operations arm.
In the Iranian capital, some citizens expressed pride and joy at the first attack launched by the Islamic Republic, from its own territory, against Israel. However, others feared the incessant escalation of war between the two countries that polarizes tensions in the region.
Milad, a professor who preferred to withhold his surname, hopes that “the conflict does not continue”, because, in his opinion, it would provoke “a destructive war” for both Israel and Iran.
“We have not yet completely reconstructed the ruins of the Iran-Iraq war [1980-1988] in the southwest of the country”, highlighted this 46-year-old man. “War is not a joke”, he added.
Iranian authorities, including the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had threatened on several occasions to respond to the bombing of their consulate in the Syrian capital.
Jafari, an employee of the judicial system who also declined to give his surname, considers concern about the current situation “normal”, “especially from an economic point of view”, and cites the fear of a depreciation of the Iranian rial.
– ‘We feel better’ –
Hundreds of people gathered in Tehran’s Palestine Square, in the center of the capital, shortly after the IRGC announced the start of Operation “Honest Promise” against Israel.
Those present commemorated the Iranian attacks by chanting “Death to Israel” and “Death to the United States”, two mottos that have been present in the country since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Protesters waved Iranian flags and the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, supported by Tehran, as well as portraits of General Qassem Soleimani, the architect of Iranian military operations in the Middle East, killed in an American bombing raid in Iraq in January 2020.
Several Iranian military leaders have been eliminated in Syria since the start of the war in October between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip, in attacks attributed to the Israeli Army.
The attack that destroyed the Iranian consulate in Syria on April 1 killed, among others, Mohammad Reza Zahedi and Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi, two Quds Force commanders.
“We are extremely happy with this action by the Guardians and, in fact, we feel better” today, said Ali Erfanian, a 65-year-old retired employee.
“In this way, we help the oppressed population of Gaza and the occupied West Bank” after six months of war in the narrow and besieged Palestinian territory, he added.
“There was sadness and anger in our hearts, and we always expected this revenge and that the Israelis would be punished for their brutality,” said Mahdi, a 35-year-old beekeeper.
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