Iran says its missiles into Syria hit ISIL targets

"A number of mid-range ground-to-ground missiles fired from the IRGC Aerospace Force bases in Kermanshah and Kurdistan provinces targeted the Takfiri terrorists in this operation and struck them with lethal and crushing blows", the statement said.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard launched the missiles against the site in Deir al-Zour, according to the Tasnim news agency.

Both the administration of former President Barack Obama and Trump's have focused exclusively on defeating Islamic State, but with the militants' self-proclaimed caliphate shrinking, USA -backed and Syrian-backed forces appear to be competing for territory. It was done to protect fighters from the militia known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, who - with USA support - are lodged in a campaign to remove ISIS from Raqqa, the terrorist group's de facto capital.

The Islamic State group did not immediately acknowledge the attack.

"Firing these missiles from 600 or 700 kilometres away onto a small building. demonstrates Iran's capacity and intelligence capabilities" against jihadist groups, he said.

Violent actions at the Majlis (Parliament) headquarters and the mausoleum of Imam Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Revolution, took place on June 7 and caused 18 deaths and more than 50 injuries, according to medical and security sources in the country.

But the missiles sent a message to more than just the extremists in Iraq and Syria, Gen. Ramazan Sharif of the Guard told state television in a telephone interview.

A pro-Damascus commander said it was "a message" to all sides in the war that could be repeated, commenting that both Tehran and Washington had set "red lines" in the last day.

However, Spokesperson for the US Central Command Colonel John Thomas said Islamic State terrorists were not present in the Ja'Din village and that it was controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces.

The Russian defense ministry says in a statement that, starting Monday, it will track all jets and drones of the USA -led coalition west of the Euphrates and treat them as targets. Back in April, Russia gave the USA the cold shoulder after Americans fired 59 missiles on a Syrian air base after a chemical weapons attack.

Ya'ari noted that Iranian officials, trying to cover up the extent of the failure, have been repeating over and over in the past few hours how successful the missile strike was.

Sharif described the missile strikes as "successful" and warned the IS group and its "regional backers" against launching attacks on Iran.

In last Wednesday's testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Tillerson accused Iran of seeking "hegemony" in the Middle East at the expense of United States allies like Saudi Arabia. On the one hand, Iran is making an unprecedented use of its weapons technology while on the other hand, it is targeting ISIS in supposed retaliation for the terror attack inside its own country.

These Iran hawks, they said, are pushing for a Syria strategy that calls for concentrating first on defeating Islamic State, then turning on Iran and its allies, including Assad, Lebanon's Hezbollah, Iraq's Shi'ite militias, and Houthi rebels in Yemen. The U.S. recently deployed a truck-mounted missile system in Syria as Iranian-backed forces cut off the advance of the U.S. -supported rebels along the Iraqi border.

"The missiles were launched in coordination with Syria", the IRGC official said. When Iran unveiled the Zolfaghar in 2016, it bore a banner printed with a 2013 quote by Khamenei saying that Iran will annihilate the Israeli cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa should Israel attack Iran.

Activists in Syria said they had no immediate information on damage or casualties from the strikes.