An Iranian official has warned that Tel Aviv will be “leveled to the ground” if Israel attacks the Islamic republic, adding that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would be personally targeted.
The threats come following an exchange on Sunday from the podium at the Munich Security Conference between Netanyahu and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
Netanyahu called out Iran while waving a piece of wreckage from a drone Israel shot down over its airspace on Feb. 10. Netanyahu rhetorically asked, “Mr. Zarif, do you recognize this? You should, it’s yours. You can take back with you a message to the tyrants of Tehran—do not test Israel’s resolve!”
Zarif responded at the conference that Netanyahu’s display was a “cartoonish circus” and said it “doesn’t deserve the dignity of a response.”
In response to the exchange, Mohsen Rezaee, secretary of Iran’s Expediency Council and former chief of the country’s Revolutionary Guards, told Hezbollah’s al-Manar television on Monday, “About Netanyahu’s unwise words, I should say that if they carry out the slightest unwise move against Iran, we will level Tel Aviv to the ground,” adding that his country “will not give Netanyahu any opportunity to flee.”
Netanyahu has consistently pressed the international community to halt Iran’s entrenchment in Syria, as well as its support for terror organizations there and in Lebanon.
“Israel will not allow Iran’s regime to put a noose of terror around our neck,” Netanyahu said during his speech. “We will act without hesitation to defend ourselves. And we will act if necessary not just against Iran’s proxies that are attacking us, but against Iran itself.”
Rezaee called it “a theatrical move and a childish game” and said that “U.S. and Israeli leaders don’t know Iran and don’t understand the power of resistance, and therefore, they continuously face defeat.”