Iran vows retaliation after Israeli airstrike kills top commander

Iran announces retaliation against Israel for the killing of Deputy Commander of the Revolutionary Guard, Abbas Nilforushan. "[Israel] will not go unanswered," declared the foreign minister of the Shiite nation, Abbas Araqchi.

Nilforushan died in Friday’s Israeli army airstrike on Beirut. In this attack, the head of the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, also perished.

- There is no doubt that this horrible crime committed by the Zionist regime [Israel] will not go unanswered - stated Araqchi.

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

In 2022, the U.S. Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions on Nilforushan for leading an organization directly responsible for quelling protests following the death of Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini. Amini died after being detained by the so-called morality police for allegedly violating Iran's strict dress code for women. Following her death, months-long protests erupted in the country, during which hundreds of people were killed and thousands were arrested.

Nilforushan also served in Syria, supporting forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad in the civil war. He began his military career in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war.

In 2020, Iranian state television named him a comrade-in-arms of General Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Quds Forces, an elite unit of the Revolutionary Guard, who was killed in an American attack in Baghdad in the same year.