May 20, 2022
Raising the rhetorical plat form still higher, President Raisi now says Iran’s armed forces will target Israel’s “center” if Israel makes the slightest move against Iran. “The message to the Zionist regime is that, if you seek to normalize relations with the countries of the region, you should know that your slightest move is not hidden from the eyes of our armed forces and our in intelligence and security forces,” the president said April 18 in a speech to military troops on Armed Forces Day. “Just know that if the slightest move on your part occurs against our nation, our armed forces will target the center of the Zionist regime, and the power of our armed forces will not leave you at rest,” he threatened.
This was the most dramatic threat to Israel ever made by an Iranian president. He issued the warning during a military parade held in front of the mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini, founding father of the Islamic Republic. Presidents Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami avoided making threats against any country, leaving the rhetoric to others.
But that changed when Mahmud Ahmadinejad succeeded them as president and regularly unleashed barrages of threatening rhetoric. Hassan Rohani entered the presidency next and toned down the violence of rhetoric, though he did not return to the silence of Rafsanjani and Khatami.
Now, Raisi has even out done the violence of Ahmadinejad’s rages. A number of military officers have used the “slightest move” language in their speeches over the past several months. It is not a term that anyone has defined, however. No one has said it refers to the slightest military move by Israel, leaving open the idea that Iran’s military could use military action in response to a political move by Israel. And that speculation was only underlined by Raisi’s speech which linked the threat of military action to Israel’s increasing diplomatic relations with Arab states.
Few believe the Islamic Republic has any intention of striking Israel militarily. The only way it could do so would be with missiles and drones, and it isn’t likely they could do much damage with their limited payloads. What they could do is set off a widespread war. In the past, Iran has always relied on its allies to attack Israel, with the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Gaza-based Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad periodically firing rockets into Israel.
But since last year, the Iranian military brass has shifted its rhetoric from making threats that Israel could be attacked without saying by whom to now saying Iran itself could strike Israel for any reason whatsoever. But, until now, Raisi had declined to endorse that rhetoric