WW3 ALERT: Iran Threatens ‘Strikes Will Be Met With Force’ After US-led Syria Attacks

Iran has issued a chilling new warning to the United States an allied forces which allegedly coordinated an attack on Syria on Sunday. Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei has warned that attacks on Iranian military bases by the US or its allies will not be tolerated and will be met with “firm force.”

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, supreme leader of Iran, has launched a blistering verbal attack against the US in the wake of missile strikes on Syrian bases in Hama and Aleppo on Sunday night, according to The Daily Star.  In a bellicose speech on Monday, Khamenei accused the US of causing a “regional crisis” in the Middle East by creating “instability” that has “brought misery to people.”

The Syrian government says that rockets struck several military bases outside of Hama and Aleppo in new “aggression” by unidentified enemies. “Syria is being exposed to a new aggression with some military bases in rural Hama and Aleppo hit with enemy rockets,” an army source reported to state television, according to TelesurTV. The state news agency says the source of the blasts is being investigated by authorities.

Missiles struck a number of Syrian military facilities in strikes that a UK-based war monitor said killed at least 26 troops, many of whom were Iranians.  Iran will respond in kind to missile strikes on any of its bases in Syria or elsewhere, Khamenei was quoted as saying by Israeli state media.  “The era of ‘hit and run’ attacks has ended, and from now on attacks will be met with firm force,” Khamenei said just hours after the missile attack on Syria that has been blamed on Israel, the US, and Britain.

Allegations RAF jets were involved were denied by the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) but the US military is yet to comment. According to Russian, Syrian, and Iranian media reports, Sunday’s strike on military bases in Hama and Aleppo appears to have been carried out by Israel, which has been accused of bombing Iranian military bases in the past, most recently on Syria’s T4 air base earlier this month.

“All these reports over [an] attack on an Iranian military base in Syria and the martyrdom of several Iranian military advisers in Syria are baseless,” an official told Iran’s Tasnim news agency.

Russian Airbase Bombed By 13 Homemade Drones

In the early morning hours of January 6, a Russian airbase in Syria was bombed by homemade drones. Russian forces came under attack by a “massive application of unmanned aerial vehicles”, says the Russian Ministry of Defence.

According to reports, 13 small drones descended on Russian forces, but none of them did any significant damage. Seven were destroyed by anti-aircraft defenses and the others were brought down using electronic countermeasures to hijack or jam the drone’s controls and land them intact. The captured aircraft seem “crudely made,” with a wooden undercarriage and plastic sheeting, and powered by a small liquid-fuel engine.  The drones carried several locally made bombs fitted with 3D printed plastic fins under their wings.

The Russian Defense Ministry has reported that the swarm of GPS-guided drones carrying improvised explosives were very high-tech. Ten of the 13 drones aimed themselves at Russia’s Hmeymim air base and three more headed for a logistics and supply base near the Syrian city of Tartus.

One of the homemade drones the Russians alleged attacked their airbase

According to the Russians, six of the drones were owned by an electronic warfare specialist and diverted from the attack. Of that six, three were successfully collected for examination but the remainder detonated after landing. The Russians report the other seven were blown up midair by a Pantsir-S anti-aircraft missile system.

“Currently, the Russian military experts are analyzing the construction, technical filling and improvised explosives of the captured UAVs,” said the statement. “Having decoded the data recorded on the UAVs, the specialists found out the launch site. It was the first time when terrorists applied a massed drone aircraft attack launched at a range of more than 50 km using modern GPS guidance system.”

While the home-made bombs look authentic, the drones themselves look cobbled together and low-tech.

Bombs carried but not detonated by the homemade drones

The drones appear to be powered by a single propeller that will be familiar to anyone who has flown a model aircraft. They also contained a control package and presumably, a fuel tank built into the body of the drone. However, they appear to have few metal parts (are composed mostly of wood and plastic) and lack even landing wheels. Russia has not shown details of the GPS control system, but insist they were highly advanced machines.

“Attacks on the Russian objects in Syria could be received from one of [the] countries with high-technological capabilities of satellite navigation and remote dropping control of professionally assembled improvised explosive devices in assigned coordinates,” Russia’s military said.

US-Supported Terrorists Shell Russian Embassy In Damascus

(© Omar Sanadiki / Reuters)

They’ve done it before without causing casualties or damage. According the Russian Foreign Ministry, terrorists fired two mortar rounds at the embassy’s compound.

One shell exploded near the diplomatic mission’s entrance, damaging the building and four vehicles. The attack came from terrorist-controlled Jobar district.

On Friday, the Security Council addressed the incident, saying its “members…condemned in the strongest terms another mortar shelling of the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Damascus (Syrian Arab Republic), which caused significant material damage.”

They stressed the “fundamental principle of the inviolability of diplomatic and consular premises.” Host governments are obligated “to take all appropriate steps to protect diplomatic and consular premises against any intrusion or damage, and to prevent any disturbance of the peace of these missions or impairment of their dignity, and to prevent any attack on diplomatic premises, agents and consular officers.”

Not easily done when countries are attacked by foreign-supported death squads, supplied with heavy weapons to wage war.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova expressed concern over no “international reaction…but we will try to get it,” she said, including on the platform of international organizations, because we are talking about a diplomatic mission, about systematic terrorist attacks.”

Russian upper house Federation Council Security and Defense Committee first deputy chairman Frants Klintesevich believes the latest shelling was conducted to disrupt Moscow’s humanitarian pause, saying it failed – nor can there be an “option of making any concessions to terrorists.”

Separately, heavily US-led Western pressure got General Assembly members to vote Russia off the UN Human Rights Council – a body infested with major human rights abusers, including reelected member Saudi Arabia with over a three-fourths majority vote.

Ignored was its genocidal war on Yemen, ruthless despotic rule tolerating no dissent, arbitrary arrests and imprisonments, torture and physical abuse, public beheadings and whippings, violence against women, along with other major violations of civil and human rights.

Russia, Hungary and Croatia vied for two Eastern European seats. Moscow’s UN envoy Vitaly Churkin said “(i)t was a very close vote and very good countries competing, Croatia, Hungary. They are fortunate because of their size, they are not exposed to the winds of international diplomacy. Russia is very exposed. We’ve been in the UNHRC for several years, and I am sure next time we will stand and get back in.”

Not easily as long as Washington maintains pressure to prevent it. US-led NATO’s undeclared war on Russia continues. Hillary’s ascension to power next year threatens to turn it red hot.