Iran said Friday that it had recovered the body of a Revolutionary Guard general killed alongside Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli strike last month in Beirut.
"With hard work and efforts around the clock, the body of martyr Abbas Nilforushan has been discovered," the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said in a statement.
"The time of transferring the body of martyr Nilforushan to the Islamic homeland and the funeral and burial plans will be announced later," the statement said.
Nilforushan, a top commander of the Quds Force, the IRGC's foreign operations arm, was killed September 27 alongside Nasrallah.
On October 1, the Revolutionary Guards fired 200 missiles at Israel in retaliation for the killing of the general, as well as Nasrallah and Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Iran-backed Palestinian group Hamas who was assassinated in Tehran in late July.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant vowed this week that his country's response would be "deadly, precise and surprising."
Iran has promised to respond if it is targeted by arch-enemy Israel.
In an address to the U.N. Security Council on Thursday, Iran's permanent representative to the United Nations, Amir Saeid Iravani, said the Islamic Republic "stands fully prepared to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity against any aggression targeting its vital interests and security."
Iran, he said, was not seeking "war or escalation" but would exercise its "inherent right to self-defense fully in line with international law and will notify the Security Council of its legitimate response."
