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Steven Emerson,
Executive Director
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March 31, 2015
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As
Nuclear Talks Continue, Iran Issues Latest Threat to Destroy Israel
by IPT News • Mar 31, 2015 at
3:39 pm
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On a day Iran and western powers reportedly agreed to move talks on Iran's nuclear weapons program
to "a new phase," a commander of the Islamic Republic's volunteer
paramilitary force issued new threats of "wiping Israel off the
map."
The goal of Israel's destruction is non-negotiable, Brigadier General Mohammad
Reza Naqdi, head of Iran's volunteer Basij Force said during a recent
conference, according to a Kol Yisrael radio report. The Basij Force
is a part of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Such talk might be dismissed as idle rhetoric.
But Iran continues to beef up Hizballah's rocket arsenal, smuggling
guided warheads into Lebanon, the Jerusalem Post's Yaakov Lappin reports.
Iran "is manufacturing new and advanced ballistic missiles, and
cruise missiles," Col. Aviram Hasson, an Israeli missile defense
expert, told Israel Air and Missile Defense Conference in Herzliya this
week. "It is turning unguided rockets that had an accuracy range of
kilometers into weapons that are accurate to within meters."
The advancements put Hizballah, Iran's Lebanese terrorist proxy,
"in a very different place compared to the Second Lebanon War in
2006," Hasson said.
In that war, Hizballah fired 4,000 rockets at Israeli cities. The range
of its current arsenal of more than 100,000 rockets include some capable of
traveling several hundred kilometers, placing Israel's
civilian population centers at risk.
Israel's Home Front Command has warned cities that they may need to evacuate civilians
in the face of an onslaught of dozens to hundreds of missiles in a single
day, Lappin reports.
Those missiles are likely beyond the capability of Israel's "Iron
Dome" defense system, which intercepted scores of Hamas rockets fired at the
country during last summer's war in Gaza. "David's Sling," a
similar system for longer range missiles, isn't expected to be operational for another year.
Hizballah fighters are busy in Syria, fighting alongside dictator Bashar
al-Assad's forces in fighting that has claimed more than 210,000 lives. But the group
continues to plan for the next war with Israel, too, perhaps because Iran's
rhetoric about seeking Israel's annihilation is consistent and specific.
"The biggest threat to our security and our future was and remains
Iran's attempts to arm with nuclear weapons," Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday.
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