White House condemns ‘Iranian regime provocation against Israel’

The White House condemned Iran on Thursday for launching a barrage of rocket fire from Syria at Israeli military targets, and threw its support behind retaliatory strikes by Israel, asserting the Jewish state’s “right to act in self-defense.”

“The Iranian regime’s deployment into Syria of offensive rocket and missile systems aimed at Israel is an unacceptable and highly dangerous development for the entire Middle East,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement.

“Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) bears full responsibility for the consequences of its reckless actions, and we call on the IRGC and its militant proxies, including Hizballah, to take no further provocative steps.”

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The rebuke by the White House came after Israel accused Iran of launching 20 rockets from installations in Syria at Israeli military outposts in the Golan Heights. 

Israel responded to that strike on Thursday by launching airstrikes against dozens of Iranian targets in Syria. According to Haaretz, the Israeli military said it was the most extensive Israeli strike in Syria in decades. 

The strikes came two days after President Trump declared that he would pull the U.S. out of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, a decision that angered Tehran and pleased leaders in Israel, who, along with Trump, have decried the deal. 

The pact sought to curb Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for lifting sanctions.

The U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear agreement sparked concerns in the Middle East and Europe of new confrontations between Iran and Israel. After the decision, Israel put its military on high alert, saying that it had detected “irregular activity” by Iranian forces in Syria.