Iran will ‘demolish’ Tel Aviv, Haifa if attacked by Israel, warns top IRGC commander

Iran will “demolish” the cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa if an Israeli attack happens, Iran’s top military spokesperson warned on Wednesday.

It came a day after the Israeli army said new plans were being drawn up to counter Tehran’s nuclear capabilities.

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If Israel “makes the smallest mistake against the Islamic Republic, we will strike the missile bases that they say they would use to attack Iran from, and also raze Haifa and Tel Aviv to the ground in the shortest time possible,” Brig. Gen. Abolfazl Shekarchi, the semi-official Fars news agency quoted him as saying.

Israel does not realise Iran’s military capabilities, he said, adding: “This cancerous tumour in the region (Israel) must collapse as it has caused a lot of damage to Muslims.”

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Israel’s top general said on Tuesday that its military was refreshing its operational plans against Iran and that any US return to the 2015 nuclear deal would be “wrong.”

“Iran can decide that it wants to advance to a bomb, either covertly or in a provocative way. In light of this basic analysis, I have ordered the IDF to prepare a number of operational plans, in addition to the existing ones. We are studying these plans and we will develop them over the next year,” Lieutenant-General Aviv Kohavi said in an address to Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies.

“A return to the 2015 nuclear agreement, or even if it is a similar accord with several improvements, is bad and wrong from an operational and strategic point of view,” he said.

Kochavi’s remarks came nearly a week after US President Joe Biden’s inauguration, who has pledged to rejoin the nuclear deal if Iran returns to complying with it.

Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, pulled Washington out of the deal in 2018 and reimposed crippling sanctions on Iran as part of a “maximum pressure” campaign – a move welcomed by Israel.

Tehran has said it will only take action after the US rejoins the deal.

“It was the US that broke the deal—for no reason. It must remedy its wrong; then Iran will respond,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad said in a Twitter post on Tuesday.