BEIRUT: Iran’s Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani said the killing of an Iranian official en route from Damascus to Beirut last week would not end the country’s support for Lebanon.

Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency quoted Larijani as saying Sunday that “the foolish enemies of this nation should know that the Iranian nation’s support for the oppressed nation of Lebanon will not be suspended due to the assassination of Hassan Shateri; rather this support will continue more powerfully and seriously.”

Hussam Khoshnevis, aka General Hassan Shateri, was the head of the Iranian Committee for Reconstruction in Lebanon.

Brig. Gen. Hossein Salami, Lieutenant Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, said over the weekend that Iran would respond to the assassination.

“Nothing will remain unanswered and the Iranian nation will respond to the brutalities of the Zionist regime [of Israel] and enemies of Islam and the [Islamic] Revolution in the battlefields,” Fars quoted Salami as saying.