Iranian cleric predicts that Lebanon-based, Iranian-backed terrorist organization, Hezbollah, will “turn Haifa and Tel Aviv into ghost-towns.”
By: The Tower
A prominent Iranian cleric threatened that Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based, Iranian-backed terrorist organization, will “turn Haifa and Tel Aviv into ghost-towns,” The Jerusalem Post reported.
The remarks made in a sermon last Friday by Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami were referring to Hezbollah’s massive rocket arsenal capable of reaching all of Israel’s major population centers.
“You’ve tried your chances twice, and failed,” said Khatami, a senior member of Iran’s Assembly of Experts. Israel has fought two wars against Hezbollah in 1982 and 2006.
“Despite the fact that Hezbollah is stronger today than ever, if you want Tel Aviv and Haifa razed to the ground, try your chances again,” he stated ominously.
Khatami’s threat follows an assessment by the head of IDF operations, Maj.-Gen. Nitzan Alon, in February that Israel faced an increased likelihood of war this year.
Allon told IDF Radio at the time that “this year has the potential for escalation, and not necessarily because either side wants to initiate it, but because of a gradual deterioration. This has led us to raise the level of preparedness.”
Referring to Hamas’s so-called ‘March of Return’, Khatami said that “the Zionists can only be answered with the language of resistance and force.”
The cleric also referred to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s repeated prediction that Israel will be destroyed within 25 years, saying “perhaps it is God’s will that, with all the madness they are causing, [Israel] will be destroyed even before.”
Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah threatened two years ago to attack now-closed ammonia storage tanks in Haifa, saying that striking the tanks would create “a nuclear bomb effect.”
A few months later Nasrallah admitted that “we are open about the fact that Hezbollah’s budget, its income, its expenses, everything it eats and drinks, its weapons and rockets, are from the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
