March 26, 2021
Regime rhetoric about Israel is getting far more heated and bellicose than ever before as the regime flouts talk about outright war with the Jewish state.
For four decades, the Islamic Republic has always been hostile to Israel. But it has carefully avoided ever threatening to attack Israel until recently.
The classic regime formula has been the line spoken long ago by Ayatollah Ruhollah Kho-meini: “Israel must be wiped off the face of the map.” (The literal translation is, “Israel must be eliminated from the page of existence.”)
This formulation does not say who will be doing the wiping off. And Iranian officials who have repeated that slogan ad infinitum have clearly understood that nuance and have often said, quite accurately, that Iran has never threatened Israel.
This distinction seems now to have ended. As the Iran Times reported earlier, some military officers have started talking about possible retaliation against Israel if it should take military action against Iran. That is not unique to the Islamic Republic; many countries threaten retaliation against another state if that state takes military action against it.
But early in March, the formulation changed. And the one who changed it was not some obscure or loudmouthed officer, but the defense minister himself, Amir Hatami.
He said Iran was prepared to “level” Tel Aviv and Haifa if Israel “commits a mistake.”
That was an unusual choice of words. In essence, it declared that Iran was invoking a right to go to war with Israel any time it felt like it. This might be seen as just some idle rhetoric or a poor choice of words. But Hatami is not an officer who spends a lot of time mouthing rhetoric for the fun of it. His words deserve to be taken more seriously especially as he spoke after many weeks in which Iran has grown more hostile to Israel and officials have abandoned the passive formulation of “Israel must be wiped off the map.”
Here is what Hatami said March 7 in a speech:
“Sometimes, the Zionist regime bites off more than it can chew and makes threats that are clearly out of desperation.
“The Leader of the Islamic Revolution and the Chief Commander of the Armed Forces, when they [Israelis] were making such threats, said once that ‘the Zionist regime is not our main enemy and they know, and if they don’t, they should know that the Islamic Republic will level Tel Aviv and Haifa to the ground if they commit a mistake.
“These statements of the Eminent Leader have become an action plan that will be executed with a single nod from the Leader,” Hatami said.
His remarks came after the Israeli defense minister, Benny Gantz, said Israel was updating plans for military strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites in case Tehran continued what he characterized as “nuclear escalation,” in an interview with Fox News.
Gantz was asked about Iran’s nuclear program and whether Israel was completing preparations to attack Iranian targets.
“We have them [plans] in our hands, of course, but we will continue constantly improving them,” he said.
“The Iranian nuclear escalation must be stalled. If the world stops them before, it’s very much [to the] good. But, if not, we must stand independently and we must defend ourselves by ourselves.”
That was hardly anything new and was really no different from what the United States has said.
Iran has repeatedly said its nuclear program is exclusively civilian. It should be noted that Iran could only “level” Tel Aviv and Haifa if it used nuclear weapons.