Israel should forsake “mischief” against Iran or face “revenge,” Hossein Salami, commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards told a memorial gathering Wednesday.

“We do not just hold funeral services for our martyrs - we also take revenge,” Salami told a memorial service for a veteran IRGC officer, Mohammad-Hassan Kusehchi, a Dezful native, who died of illness in March 2021. “These are real and serious messages.”

Major-General Salami described the new century, in the Iranian calendar, as a period of decline for the West: “The end of America and western civilization began many years ago. In addition, the revolutionary movement has continued and accelerated in recent years.”

While Israeli attacks go back to killing nuclear scientists from 2010 to 2020, and include June 2021’s attack on a nuclear facility at Karaj, there has been a recent escalation. In February, an Israeli aerial strike reportedly destroyed hundreds of drones at an airbase in Kermanshah province, and March 7 an Israeli airstrike near Damascus killed two Iranian officers in the latest of hundreds of Israeli airstrikes on Iranian forces in Syria since 2017.

The apparent response was Tehran's recent missile attack on Iraq’s Erbil, where Iran fired 12 ballistic missiles saying it targeted an Israeli secret base. Some Iran-backed sources said the Erbil attack killed several people but according to Iraqi officials no one was killed.