Amid rising tensions between IDF and Iranian forces in Syria, IRGC deputy leader says Jewish state ‘will not find enough graves to bury their dead’
A top Iranian general said Thursday his country has developed a “strategic capacity” to destroy Israel.
“We warn them [Zionists] that if a new war breaks out, it will result in their termination,” Brig. Gen. Hossein Salami, the second-in-command of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said at a conference in the Iranian city of Mashhad, according to the regime-linked Tasnim news agency.
Tasnim went on to paraphrase Salami as saying that “Iran has warned the Zionist regime not to play with fire, because they will be destroyed before the US helps them.”
He vowed that a new war “will result in Israel’s defeat within three days, in a way that they will not find enough graves to bury their dead.”
The comments followed a series of reciprocal taunts by Israeli and Iranian leaders in recent weeks amid rising tensions on the Israeli-Syrian border between IDF and Iranian forces.
On Tuesday, Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran’s National Security Council, warned that terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah were prepared to unleash an “inferno” on the Jewish state.
Speaking at a space tech conference, Shamkhani spoke of “hundreds of kilometers of tunnels dug underneath [Israelis’] feet, and when the resistance forces in Gaza and Lebanon have missiles with pinpoint accuracy and are ready to respond to any foolish Israeli behavior with an inferno.”
Also on Tuesday, Iran’s Defense Minister Amir Hatami railed at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s campaign against Iran’s missile program. The program was among the reasons cited by US President Donald Trump for leaving the 2015 nuclear deal last year and reimposing crippling sanctions.
“The enemies say Iran’s missile power should be eliminated, but we have repeatedly said our missile capabilities are not negotiable,” Hatami said, according to Reuters.
On Monday, the IRGC’s Salami told a reporter in Tehran that Iran’s strategy was to eventually wipe Israel off the “global political map.”
Iran and Israel have increasingly clashed in Syria, where Jerusalem is attempting to keep Tehran’s forces from entrenching themselves militarily.
Israel sees Iranian entrenchment in Syria as a major threat and in recent years has carried out hundreds of airstrikes in Syria against targets linked to Iran, which alongside its proxies and Russia, is fighting on behalf of the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
