Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday, a day after the United States launched airstrikes against Iranian-affiliated forces in Iraq and Syria.
"Benjamin Netanyahu spoke today with US Secretary of State Pompeo and commended him on the important US action against Iran and its proxies in the region," the Prime Minister's Office said in a statement.
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The US military carried out airstrikes on Sunday against the Iranian-backed Kata'ib Hezbollah militia group in response to the killing of a US civilian contractor in a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base, officials said. The airstrikes apparently killed more than 20 people.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps warned the US that it might face retaliation for the strikes. "It is a natural right of people and defense forces of Iraq to avenge this act of terrorism accordingly," the IRGC said in a statement according to the Tasnim news agency.
A top Iraqi militia leader warned of a strong response against US forces. "The blood of the martyrs will not be in vain and our response will be very tough on the American forces in Iraq," senior commander Jamal Jaafar Ibrahimi, known by his nom de guerre Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, said late on Sunday.
Iran said it strongly condemned the raids as "terrorism." Al-Muhandis is a senior commander of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), an umbrella group of paramilitary of mainly Iran-backed Shiite militias that was formally integrated into Iraq's armed forces.
He is also one of Iran's most powerful allies in Iraq and formerly headed Kata'ib Hezbollah, which he founded.
