As a top security official from Tehran arrived in Damascus to show support for the regime of President Bashar Assad, a senior Iranian military chief warned that there will a massive response to Israel’s alleged attack on a Syrian research facility last week, Iranian Press TV reported on Sunday.

“Syria’s response to the recent aggression of the Zionist regime against this country will send this regime into a coma,” Brig. Gen. Masoud Jazayeri, the deputy chairman of the Iranian Armed Forces, said on Saturday.

Iran on Thursday threatened “grave consequences for Tel Aviv” after an alleged Israeli airstrike on Syrian military targets early Wednesday morning.

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Jazayeri added that the era in which hegemonic powers bullied independent nations had come to an end, the report said.

“In the new era, the criminals should know that behind their every blow lies a massive retaliatory blow, whose time, level and magnitude will be determined by the resolve of the free and anti-hegemonic nations,” he warned.

Jazayeri’s comments came as Saeed Jalili, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, arrived in Damascus for a round of talks with senior regime officials, including Assad.

“Syria is considered the front line of the Muslim world in the face of the Zionist enemy,” Jalili said. “Enemies are attacking the Syrian infrastructure and imposing economic sanctions on it, in a desperate attempt to break the resistance and steadfastness of the Syrian nations.”

Jalili warned that Iran would not permit another Israeli attack on Syria. In 2006 Iran and Syria signed a military cooperation pact.

“It is our duty to provide all kinds of assistance to alleviate the Syrian people’s suffering,” he said.

Jalili also met with Syria’s minister of National Reconciliation, Ali Haidar, to discuss measures for implementing Assad’s initiative for ending the turmoil in Syria.

“The visit comes in the framework of solving the Syrian unrest peacefully,” Haidar said, noting that Iran fully supported Assad’s suggestions for ending the civil war.

The Syrian president announced at the beginning of January that he wanted to bring an end to the violence that has killed over 60,000 people in the country since 2011 by holding a national reconciliation conference and establishing a new constitution. Washington rejected the suggestion as being “detached from reality.”