Israel’s armed forces targeted “almost all” Iranian military sites in Syria in the early hours of Thursday morning in response to a rocket attack by Iran’s Quds forces on Israeli army posts in the Golan Heights, according to a senior government minister.

Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s defence minister, said he hoped Tehran and Damascus “had got the message” after Israeli jets and ground troops fired missiles against dozens of targets in Syria. “We hit?.?.?.?almost all of the Iranian infrastructure,” he told reporters. “They must remember that if it rains here (in Israel) it will pour there.”

It is the first known instance of the two regional rivals attacking each other directly since the beginning of the Syrian civil war, which has seen Iranian and Lebanese Hizbollah forces build up their presence close to Israel’s northern border as they prop up Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s regime.