Sergei Shoigu, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, arrived in Iran on Monday for talks with senior officials amid mounting concerns of a large-scale attack on Israel by Tehran and its terrorist proxies.
Shoigu, who until May served as Moscow’s defense minister, was scheduled to meet military and security officials, as well as President Masoud Pezeshkian, to discuss cooperation and “various aspects of global and regional security,” Russia’s state-run RIA Novosti outlet reported.
The Russian security official was invited to Tehran in May by Ali Akbar Ahmadian, secretary of the Islamic Republic’s Supreme National Security Council—the main Iranian military decision-making body.
Tehran has vowed revenge following the July 31 assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the top “political” leader of Hamas, who died in an explosion at his Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps guesthouse in Tehran. Iran and the Palestinian terrorist group have accused Israel of killing Haniyeh.
Israel has also been awaiting the response by Iran’s terrorist proxies to its killing of top Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut on July 30. Shukr was responsible for a recent rocket attack that killed 12 children in the Golan Heights, according to Israel, and was also behind the 1983 bombing that killed more than 300 U.S. and French troops in Beirut.
Hours after Haniyeh’s death, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei ordered a direct attack on Israel during an emergency meeting of the Supreme National Security Council, The New York Times reported.
“All fronts of the resistance will take revenge for Haniyeh’s blood,” Ahmadian told Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency last week.
The Kremlin last week “strongly condemned” the alleged Israeli killing of Haniyeh while urging “all the parties involved to exercise restraint.
“We believe that such actions are directed against attempts to establish peace in the region and can significantly destabilize an already tense situation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday.
Russia has supplied Iran with systems to jam communications in an attempt to strengthen the Islamic Republic’s defenses and fend off an Israeli retaliatory attack, according to reports on Sunday.
Iran and Hezbollah could attack the Jewish state as early as Monday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told G7 countries on Sunday.
Iranian officials have told Arab diplomats that Tehran is determined to strike Israel even if doing so sparks an all-out regional war involving Israel and Iran’s proxies, The Wall Street Journal reported.