*TEHRAN: *The commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Monday thatdestroying arch-rival Israel was an “achievable goal”.
“This sinister regime must be wiped off the map and this is no longer … adream [but] it is an achievable goal,” Major General Hossein Salami said,quoted by the *Guards’ Sepah* news site.
Four decades on from Iran’s Islamic revolution, “we have managed to obtainthe capacity to destroy the imposter Zionist regime”, he said.
Salami’s comments, while not unusual for Iranian officials, come amidparticularly heightened international tensions over Iran’s nuclearprogramme and a series of incidents that have raised fears of aconfrontation between Tehran and its other main regional rival, Riyadh.
The United States, which withdrew from a landmark nuclear deal between Iranand world powers in 2018, has imposed a campaign of “maximum pressure” —with vocal support from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Salami’s comments were given prominent coverage by the Tasnim and Fars newsagencies, close to ultra-conservative political factions.
The official *IRNA* agency also carried his remarks, but placed moreemphasis on his assertion that Iran was growing stronger and would finallybeat its foes despite “hostility” towards it.
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Iran has been consistently hostile towards Israel since its 1979revolution, and Tehran openly supports anti-Israeli armed groups includingPalestinian Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
In June 2018, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reaffirmed Tehran’slong-held position that Israel is “a malignant cancerous tumor that must beremoved and eradicated”.
Iranian generals routinely express the desire to destroy Israel or claim tobe able to wipe out Tel Aviv.
However, official discourse in recent years has generally taken care toclarify that the Jewish state will cease to exist because of its own“arrogance”, not because of an attack by Iran. -APP/AFP
