Above: General Esmail Qa\u2019ani<\/p>\n
The commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps warned on Sunday that the United States and Israel should expect \u201cnew surprises\u201d after several American aircraft were shot down over central Iran.<\/strong><\/p>\n In a message posted on X, Brigadier General Esmail Qa\u2019ani reminded the United States that its previous \u201crescue operations\u201d inside Iran had ended in failure just as its most recent attempt to retrieve a downed pilot resulted in the loss of two American military jets and two helicopters.<\/p>\n He drew parallels between the operation earlier in the day and\u00a0the 1980 Operation Eagle Claw, also known as the Tabas disaster, in which a US mission to free American spies in Iran collapsed in the desert.<\/p>\n Iranian forces destroyed two US C-130 transport aircraft and two Black Hawk helicopters, which had come to rescue\u00a0the pilot in southern Isfahan province early Sunday.<\/p>\n \u201cSmoke rising from the south of Isfahan and the charred Israeli vessel in the Med echo the 1980 Tabas fiasco and the 2006 Sa\u2019ar naval disaster,\u201d Qa’ani\u00a0wrote.<\/p>\n By mentioning the \u201ccharred Israeli vessel\u201d in the Mediterranean, the general was referring to a statement by Hezbollah, which said it had targeted an Israeli warship about 68 nautical miles off Lebanon\u2019s coast.<\/p>\n General Qa\u2019ani further warned that the \u201cEpstein elite\u201d should expect further \u201csurprises\u201d across the region.<\/p>\n \u201cMore dead-end and Desert One disasters, this time across the entire region,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The US and Israel started a fresh round of aerial aggression on Iran on February 28, some eight months after they carried out unprovoked attacks on the country.<\/p>\n Iran began to swiftly retaliate against the strikes by launching barrages of missile and drone attacks on the Israeli-occupied territories as well as on US bases in regional countries.<\/p>\n