Iranian military commanders continued to issue warnings and threats to
Israel on the second day of Iranian Sacred Defense Week. An Israeli war
on Iran "will eventually happen" but the Jewish state will subsequently
be destroyed, Iran's Revolutionary Guard, Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari said
in comments published Saturday in Iranian media.
Sacred Defense Week
is an annual commemoration of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, held on the
anniversary of the beginning of the war.
"A war will occur, but it's not clear where or when it will be," Jafari was quoted as saying. "Israel seeks war with us, but it's not clear when the war will occur."
"Right now they see war as the only method of confrontation," he said.
As speculation mounts that Israel could launch air strikes on Iran before US elections in November, Jafari told a news conference that the Jewish state would be destroyed if it took such a step.
"Their threats only prove that their enmity with Islam and the revolution is serious, and eventually this enmity will lead to physical conflict," Jafari said when asked about Israeli threats to strike Iran's nuclear facilities, the Iranian Students' News Agency (ISNA) reported.
"We are making all efforts to increase our defensive capabilities so that if there is an attack ... we could defend ourselves and other countries that need our help with high defensive capabilities," he continued.
Meanwhile, Lieutenant Commander of the Iranian Army Brigadier
General Abdul-Rahim Moussavi warned enemies, particularly Israel, that
any aggression toward Iran would be met with a crushing response.
"In
case of an aggression, the enemy will face something that it has never
expected," Fars quoted him as saying. "After all, our enemies are
soldiers, too, and know that we have not displayed everything we have,"
he asserted, adding that Israeli aggression would "speed up its
annihilation."
These comments came a day after Iranian commanders threatened
the complete destruction of the State of Israel as the country unveiled
a domestically manufactured air defense system as part of a military
parade, various Iranian news agencies reported.
"If the Zionist
regime makes such a move, there will no longer be a thing called the
Zionist regime,” Revolutionary Guards General Amir Ali Hajizadeh said,
according to Iran's Press TV. “The Zionist regime cannot even imagine
our response to the military attack of this regime."