Iran will "raze Tel Aviv to the ground" if it is attacked by the United States, a top Iranian official said over the weekend, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute.
Expediency Council Secretary Gen. Mohsen Rezaee, formerly the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps told Lebanon's Mayadeen TV – a station affiliated with the Hezbollah terrorist group, Iran's primary regional proxy – that Tehran has been "looking for such a pretext. If they [the US] do something, we can use it as a pretext to attack Israel, because Israel played a role in the martyrdom of Gen. Soleimani. It was the Israelis who reported about the martyr Soleimani's trip from Damascus to Baghdad. We were waiting for the Americans to give us the pretext to strike Tel-Aviv, just like we attacked Ayn Al-Assad."
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Quds Force Commander Gen. Qassem Soleimani, was killed in US drone strike in Iraq on Jan. 3. He was a key figure in spreading and maintaining Iran's aspirations of regional hegemony through acts of terrorism. He wielded immense power and influence in his position and was widely considered second only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Foreign media reports alleged that Israel provided the US with intelligence that contributed to the mission. No Israeli official has corroborated these reports.
Rezaee further said that Tehran has precise information on American activity in the region, including on all US bases and aircraft carriers. Iran, he boasted, even monitors US soldiers when they go to hotels in Kuwait or Bahrain.
"All the American bases are under our surveillance now. All the American aircraft carriers are under our control," he said. "We know the number of American ships in the Indian Ocean and the Sea of Oman, and where they are in the Persian Gulf, and what they have in Qatar and Bahrain, and [we know about] their activity in Iraq.
"Even when American soldiers go to a hotel in Kuwait or Bahrain – we monitor them. We know their hotel in Bahrain, and were they go to eat and rest in Dubai. We know the names of their friends and the translators they employ. We know exactly what they are doing in Iraq and in other countries in the region, and we know where they get their meat and food. Our information is very precise."
He went on to state that the US presence in the region is volatile and the goal of the Trump peace plan was to give it a stable foothold in the region, to do away with the Palestinian cause, take over Gaza and disarm Hamas.
Predicting a significant weakening of the US over the next decade, he added that once Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries realize that America is no longer as strong as it was, there will be a revolution in Saudi Arabia, followed by revolutions in other Gulf countries. The global collapse of the United States, he said, will begin in "West Asia."
Meanwhile, current Quds Force commander Gen. Esmail Ghaani threatened that American troops around the world will fall prey to the "powerful hand of the Islamic Revolution."
MEMRI quoted Ghaani as saying, "The enemy does not understand any language other than the language of force. There can be no compromise with it. The [only] way is the way of the resistance.
"America has made a grave mistake. It has paved the way for all the free men of the world to confront it. Every free man in the world feels that if he encounters America somewhere, he should punch it in the mouth. And he will. You will see. I'm telling the American public that from now on you should think of what you are doing. We don't want American soldiers to be killed. Either you restrain them, or the powerful hand of the sons of the Islamic Revolution will do this all over the world. However, if you do this yourselves, you will minimize your losses."
JNS.org contributed to this report
