Thousands of Iranians took to the streets early Sunday in a show of support for the unprecedented drone and missile attack underway against arch foe Israel.
“Death to Israel!” and “Death to America!” chanted demonstrators in Tehran’s Palestine Square shortly after the Revolutionary Guards announced the launch of Operation Honest Promise.
A mural saying “the next slap is fiercer” was unveiled in the square where a huge banner has hung for days calling, in Hebrew, for Israelis to “take shelter”.
On Sunday, demonstrators waved Iranian and Palestinian national flags alongside banners reading “God’s victory is near”.
Iran’s attack came in retaliation for an April 1 strike that levelled the five-storey consular annexe of the Iranian embassy in Damascus and killed seven Revolutionary Guards, two of them generals.
Tehran has since vowed to avenge the strike which was widely blamed on Israel.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei pledged that the “evil (Israeli) regime will be punished”.
Iranian media described the attack on Israel as “complex” as it also involved Iranian allies in Yemen, Lebanon and Iraq.
“This attack did not come from Iran only, and this regime (Israel) is being punished from four directions,” the Tasnim news agency said.
A large crowd of demonstrators gathered outside the British embassy in Tehran
