TEHRAN, 17 July 2006 — Iran warned its archenemy Israel yesterday of “unimaginable losses” if it attacks Syria and vowed that it was standing by the Syrian people. “We hope the Zionist regime does not make the mistake of attacking Syria, because extending the front would definitely make the Zionist regime face unimaginable losses,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters. “Iran is standing by the Syrian people,” he said of the Islamic republic’s sole regional ally.

“We have offered and will offer Syria and Lebanon spiritual and humanitarian support,” Asefi insisted, reiterating Iran’s denial that it is providing military and financial assistance to the Hezbollah movement. The Israeli Army has said Hezbollah militants had used an Iranian-built radar-guided anti-ship missile in an attack on Friday on an Israeli warship off Lebanon’s coast. The attack marked the Lebanese militia’s first successful strike on an Israeli warship, dealing an unprecedented blow to the Jewish state’s military. One Israeli sailor was killed and three more were missing, feared dead.

An Israeli military intelligence official has also alleged that around 100 members of Iran’s powerful ideological army the elite Revolutionary Guards were in Lebanon, acting as military advisers to Hezbollah.

Iran is a major backer of Hezbollah, but regularly insists that it only gives “moral support” to the resistance movement. “We have no Guards there. It is not true that we have sent missiles. Hezbollah is capable enough. The Zionist regime is under pressure,” Asefi said, repeating Iran’s denial of any connection to the attack.

He also hit out at the United States after President George W. Bush said Israel had “every right to defend itself.” “The United States has had a destructive role by vetoing resolutions and hence encouraging the Israeli crimes,” Asefi said, referring to Washington’s use of its veto in the UN Security Council Thursday to block a resolution calling for a halt to an Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip. “The United States should reconsider its policies and correct its wrong attitude of supporting the Zionist regime.”

On Friday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad boasted that Israel was not powerful enough to take on Iran and also warned against an attack against Syria. “If Israel commits another act of idiocy and aggresses Syria, this will be the same as an aggression against the entire Islamic world and it will receive a stinging response,” Ahmadinejad said in a telephone conversation with his Syrian counterpart Bashar Assad.

Meanwhile, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh has said the international community has descended into “unprecedented silence” over raging turmoil in the Middle East and Israeli “cruelty” against the Palestinians, in remarks published in a Turkish newspaper yesterday. “The world is in a very strange state of silence... It seems the people do not wish to see this cruelty,” the head of the Hamas-led government said in an interview with the mass-circulation daily Sabah.

“I am wondering whether the international community has been so silent ever before in the face of such cruelty. I’ve never heard of or read about the acceptance of such cruelty,” he said. Haniyeh, however, said he kept his hopes high that “humankind will one day hear the voice of its conscience.”

In an article published in the Washington Post on Tuesday, Haniyeh charged that the deadly Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip was part of a planned operation to undermine the Hamas government.