2024-04-14 16:35:00
Iranians oscillated on Sunday between fear of escalation and pride in their country’s military capabilities, following the attack launched on Saturday by the Islamic Republic against Israel.
The attack with drones and missiles targeted two military centers that were used to launch a bombardment against the Iranian consulate in Damascus on April 1.
The Islamic Republic accused Israel of the attack, in which seven Revolutionary Guards were killed, two of them generals of the Quds Force, its foreign operations arm.
In Tehran, some Iranians expressed pride and joy over the first attack launched by Iran from its territory against Israel and others feared an unstoppable escalation of war between the two countries that polarize tensions in the region.
Milad, a professor who preferred not to give his last name, hopes that “the conflict does not continue,” because it would provoke, according to him, “a destructive war” for both Israel and Iran.
“We have not yet completely rebuilt the ruins of the Iran-Iraq war [1980-1988] in the southwest of the country,” emphasizes the 46-year-old man. “War is not a joke,” he adds.
Iranian authorities, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had repeatedly threatened to respond to the bombing of their consulate in the Syrian capital.
Jafari, an employee of the judicial system who also did not want to give his last name, considers it “normal” to be concerned about the current situation, “especially from an economic point of view,” and cites the fear of a depreciation of the Iranian rial.
Hundreds of people gathered in Tehran’s Palestine Square, in the center of the capital, shortly after the Revolutionary Guard announced the start of Operation “Honest Promise” against Israel.
Residents celebrated the Iranian attacks by chanting “Death to Israel” and “Death to the United States,” two slogans widely present in the country since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
Protesters waved flags of Iran and the Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah movement, as well as portraits of General Qassem Soleimani, the architect of Iranian military operations in the Middle East, who was killed in a January 2020 US bombing in Iraq.
Several Iranian military leaders have been killed in Syria since the start of the war in early October between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in the War Strip, in attacks attributed to Israel.
The attack that destroyed the Iranian consulate in Syria on April 1 killed among others Mohammad Reza Zahedi and Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi, two commanders of the Quds Force, the arm of the Revolutionary Guards that focuses on Iran’s foreign operations. .
“We feel extremely happy about this action by the Guardians and, in fact, we feel better” today, said Ali Erfanian, a 65-year-old retired civil servant.
“We have thus helped 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 hoped for this revenge and for the Israelis to be punished for their brutality,” said Mahdi, a 35-year-old beekeeper.
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