On Monday, the Commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said that destroying Israel was now an “achievable goal”.
As reported on the IRGC’s Sepah news site, Major General Hossein Salami then confirmed that Iran have “managed to obtain the capacity to destroy the impostor Zionist regime”.
Salami continued: “This sinister regime must be wiped off the map and this is no longer… a dream [but] it is an achievable goal”.
The comments were made at a meeting in Tehran for commanders of the IRGC amid rising tensions between Iran and the US and its allies.
Just two days before these remarks in an interview with Iranian news agency Tasnim, the deputy commander of operations of the IRGC, Abbas Nilforoushan, threatened “if Israel makes a strategic mistake, it has to collect bits and pieces of Tel Aviv from the lower depths of the Mediterranean Sea”. He also boasted of Iran’s “deep and long-range [missile] assault capability”.
In April, President of the United States Donald Trump, designated the IRGC as a terrorist organisation marking the first time Washington has formally named a branch of the armed forces of a foreign government as a terrorist group.
In a statement, President Trump said this unprecedented step “recognises the reality that Iran is not only a state sponsor of terrorism, but that the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] IRGC actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft”.
