Rezai says aware of Israel's sensitive spots
Photo: Reuters
Iranian general: I can stop Israel with ‘one strike’
Former Revolutionary Guards chief Mohsen Rezai says Jewish state will not dare threaten Islamic republic if he is elected president
Iran’s
former Revolutionary Guards chief Mohsen Rezai warned on Sunday he could stop Israel
with “one strike” and said it would not dare to threaten the Islamic republic if he is elected president.
“If government falls into our hands Israel will not dare threaten Iran because the Israelis and the Americans know us and our friends,” said Rezai, who is one of three candidates challenging President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
in the June 12 election.
“My government... understands missiles and tanks as well as foreign policy and knows exactly where Israel’s sensitive spots are. It could stop them forever with one strike,” Rezai told a news conference.
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“Our presence in government will act as a deterrent to threats,” said the veteran conservative who headed the elite Guards force for 16 years to 1997, including during Iran’s war with Iraq in the 1980s.
His comments came after an opinion poll by Tel Aviv University showed one in two Israelis back an immediate attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Israel and Washington accuse Iran of trying to develop atomic weapons under the guise of a civilian nuclear program, a charge Tehran has repeatedly denied.
Israel considers Iran its main enemy following the hardline anti-Israeli stance adopted by Ahmadinejad who has said the Jewish state is doomed to be “wiped off the map.”
Rezai has harshly criticized the hardline president, accusing him of adventurism and pushing Iran to the edge of a “precipice.”
