Nasrallah: Israel in 'direct combat' with Iran

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah threatened Israel on Friday, saying its strike on a Syrian airbase this week has put it in direct confrontation with Iran.

"The Israelis committed a historic mistake... and put themselves in direct combat with Iran,"

Nasrallah warned in a televised address, according to AFP.

Seven Iranian personnel were killed in Monday's early-morning strike on the T-4 airbase in Syria, but Tehran had not specified which units the fighters belonged to.

Iran accused Israel of being behind the air strike, as did the Syrian regime as well as Russia. The IDF has refused to comment on the air strike.

On Friday, Nasrallah said the casualties were elite Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

"This is unprecedented in seven years: that Israel directly targets Iran's Revolutionary Guard," Nasrallah said, adding, "This is a turning point for the region, and what came before is not what will come after."

Israel is believed to have carried out numerous raids inside Syria since 2013 but it rarely admits to them publicly, although Israeli officials do say that Iranian influence in Syria is unacceptable. Russian, Iranian and Hezbollah fighters have a presence at the T-4 base which was attacked, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The Observatory said a total of 14 fighters, including Iranians, died in the strike. No Russians were reported to have died.

The strike came just two days after a suspected chemical gas attack in Douma. The alleged use of poison gas in the attack prompted U.S. President Donald Trump and other Western leaders to threaten military action against Syria, something Nasrallah shrugged off on Friday.

"Let the whole world know that Trump's Hollywood-style tweets and threats have not, and will not, scare Syria, Iran, Russia, or the region's resistance movements and peoples," he said.