The launch of an Iranian Emad intermediate-range ballistic missile. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

If Israel ever were to bomb Iran, the Islamic Republic would “flatten Tel Aviv,” an Iranian official recently declared, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) reported.

Mohsen Rafighdoost — a former minister of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) who now heads the Noor Foundation — reportedly told a Tehran political gathering, “We have warehouses full [of missiles] in Tehran, Zanjan [in northwest Iran] and Oshnavieh [in Western Azerbaijan Province in northwest Iran] that can strike Tel Aviv.”

The Jewish state’s commercial capital would be destroyed, Rafighdoost threatened, “if only a single [Israeli] shell would strike anywhere in this country.”

Last month, as reported by The Algemeiner, a banner on the side of a truck carrying a new long-range Iranian ballistic missile — the Zolfaqar — in a military parade in Tehran issued a direct threat to the Jewish state. “If the leaders of the Zionist regime make a mistake then the Islamic Republic will turn Tel Aviv and Haifa into dust,” it said.

According to MEMRI, In his Sept. 25 speech, Rafighdoost claimed that the IRGC’s ground troops were “perhaps five times better than the American army.”

“Despite all the enemy media and cultural propaganda against us, if America wants to try its luck against us, [it should know that] we are completely capable of mobilizing nine million fighters [against it]… on the [battle]front in under 10 days,” he stated.

Iran’s foes, Rafighdoost asserted, were deterred from getting involved in a war with the Islamic Republic.

“In recent years, the enemies have spoken of the option [of a military strike against Iran] as being on the table, but that was a lie,” he said, in an apparent reference to past Israeli and US vows to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons by any means necessary.

Referring to Iran’s Lebanon-based terrorist proxy, Rafighdoost said Hezbollah had been created by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to “Islamize” other countries in the region. “Today, in the era of the [Supreme] Leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Hezbollah] has become a supreme force in the region,” he stated.