Iranian Defense Minister Amir Hatami is warning that his country will destroy Tel Aviv and Haifa in response to any Israeli missteps.
“Sometimes, the Zionist regime [Israel] out of desperation makes big claims against the Islamic Republic of Iran to allegedly threaten it while this regime knows and if it doesn’t know, it must know that if it does a damn thing, we will raze Tel Aviv and Haifa to the ground,” vowed Hatami, as reported in the Tehran Times.
According to the newspaper, founded as a ‘foreign-language voice of the Islamic Revolution,’ Hatami made the remarks at a ceremony held on Sunday in appreciation of Iranian soldiers.
“The order of the Commander-in-Chief of the Iranian Armed Forces has been carefully enacted and turned into a blueprint, which will be implemented with a single beckon by the Commander-in-Chief,” Hatami said, according to Press TV, underscoring, “I advise them [Israel] not to make this mistake, even verbally.”
“Fortunately, today the Islamic Republic of Iran has all the dimensions of power to maintain the stability of the country, and one of the salient features of the soft power of the Islamic Republic, which has various components, is the axis of resistance. The regional power of the Islamic Republic of Iran is another feature one of whose results are resistance groups,” the defense minister was cited as saying.
Hatami’s threats come in the wake of stern warnings by Israeli security officials.
Israeli Alternate Premier and Defense Minister Benny Gantz told Fox News last week that Jerusalem may be compelled to take action if the international community fails to thwart Iran’s nuclear aspirations.
“If the world stops them before, it is very much good; but if not, we must stand independently and we must defend ourselves by ourselves,” he said.
In a message directed at the administration of United States President Joe Biden, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi said “returning to the 2015 nuclear agreement or even to an agreement that is similar but with a few improvements is a bad thing, and it is not the right thing to do.”
While addressing the 14th annual international conference of the Institute for National Security Studies in January, the Israeli general also revealed that he has “instructed the IDF to prepare a number of operational plans, in addition to the plans that already exist” to prevent the Islamic Republic from developing nuclear arms capability.
“We are studying these plans and will develop them further this year,” he said, adding that even though the decision “to activate” them would be undertaken by the nation’s political leaders, it is essential that “these plans must be on the table, available and rehearsed.”
Iran’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations Office at Vienna Kazem Gharibabadi told the International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors meeting last Friday that, “The Islamic Republic of Iran strongly warns against any adventurism by Israeli regime and reserves its inherent right to self-defense to decisively respond to any threat or wrongful act perpetrated by this regime.”