Zionist regime to pay a heavy price: Ghalibaf

Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf made the remarks at the funeral ceremony of Ismail Haniyeh, the political bureau chief of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas who was martyred in Tehran on Wednesday.

He added that the Tel Aviv regime’s crimes are rooted in its inability to counter the resistance forces.

The top Iranian parliamentarian emphasized that Israel will commit a “strategic mistake” if it thinks that targeting the resistance front will have an impact on the ongoing developments in the region.

Ghalibaf said the era of "hit and run" for the apartheid Israel and its main ally US has come to end.

“It is our duty to react in the right place and at the right time,” he pointed out.

The Iranian speaker warned that the Israeli regime will pay a “heavy price” for its act of assassination.

He noted that the Israeli regime’s move to assassinate resistance commanders in Iran and Lebanon is the outcome of its “weakness” and said, “Such acts of terror will have no impact on the [continuation] of our path.”

Pointing to the Tel Aviv regime’s genocidal war against the people of Palestine in Gaza, particularly women and children, Qalibaf added, “We are witnessing the confrontation of humanity with crime there.”

Ismail Haniyeh, the political bureau chief of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, and one of his bodyguards were killed in their residence in the Iranian capital early on Wednesday.

They were killed after their residence was hit, the public relations office of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) said in a statement.

The reasons behind the attack are under investigation and the details will be released later, the statement read.

Haniyeh was in Tehran to attend the inauguration ceremony of the new Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Tuesday (July 30).