Tehran, November 22: A commander of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards said on Sunday that air defence forces would “annihilate” Israeli warplanes if they attacked the Islamic republic, as the forces began five days of war games.
The manoeuvres are aimed at practising responses to simulated attacks on the country’s nuclear facilities.
“Their (Israeli) F-15 and F-16 fighters will be trapped by our air defence forces and will be annihilated,” Amir Ali Hajizadeh, who heads the Guards’ air force wing, told the Fars news agency.
“Even if their planes escape and land at the bases from which they took off, their bases will be struck by our destructive surface-to-surface missiles.”
An aide to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also said yesterday that if Iran is attacked, it will retaliate against the Israeli metropolis of Tel Aviv.
“If the enemy attacks Iran, our missiles will strike Tel Aviv,” the official IRNA news agency quoted Khamenei’s representative in the Guards, Mojhtaba Zolnoor, as saying.
“Our unit will be in charge of the manoeuvres but there will be units from the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij (militia),” he added.
Iran’s still non-operational nuclear power plant is in southern Bushehr province while its uranium enrichment plants are in Isfahan and near Tehran.
–Agencies