Monday, July 02, 2012

Iran to Israel: threatens to "wipe them off the face of the earth"

Iran threatens Israel
Iran announced missile tests on Sunday and threatened to wipe Israel "off the face of the earth" if the Jewish state attacked it, brandishing some of its starkest threats on the day Europe began enforcing an oil embargo and harsh new sanctions....

Israel says it could attack Iran if diplomacy fails to force Tehran to abandon its nuclear aims. The United States also says military force is on the table as a last resort, but U.S. officials have repeatedly encouraged the Israelis to be patient while new sanctions take effect....

Announcing three days of missile tests in the coming week, Revolutionary Guards General Amir Ali Hajizadeh said the exercises should be seen as a message "that the Islamic Republic of Iran is resolute in standing up to ... bullying, and will respond to any possible evil decisively and strongly."

Any attack on Iran by Israel would be answered resolutely: "If they take any action, they will hand us an excuse to wipe them off the face of the earth," said Hajizadeh, head of the Guards' airborne division, according to state news agency IRNA.
Israel is threatening to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities while Iran threatens in response to destroy Israel.   I'm not in favor (at all) of Israel attacking Iran, but notice the difference in their threats - one threatens military facilities, the other threatens all the inhabitants of Israel (which includes, of course, a substantial Arab Israeli population as well as the residents of the West Bank and Gaza who would also suffer if Israel is "wiped off the face of the earth").

1 comment:

  1. Nice interpretation of the Iranian actions…. But you failed to mention that Iran at first place threaten to wipe Israel from the face of the earth. Various Iranian leaders are talking about "wiping of Israel from the map" (in different verses) for more than 10 years now.
    The Iranian presidential website stated that "the Zionist Regime of Israel faces a dead end and will under God's grace be wiped off the map, and "the Zionist Regime that is a usurper and illegitimate regime and a cancerous tumor should be wiped off the map." Tehran's annual conference which is called "the World Without Zionism" means in other words "the World Without Israel". Is there is any other state in the universe that the Iranians (or Muslims as a whole) call for her destruction?
    Those who deny the fact that Iranian leaders are threatening Israel existence, explain their stand by telling us that there is “a problem in translating a metaphorical turn of phrase in Persian that has no exact English equivalent” and rely on their reader’s lack of Persian language knowledge. Is telling us that “It [Israel] will not survive, it is a cancerous tumor that should be removed” (Ahmadinejad, April 2012) is because the Iranian worried about the good health of the Israelis or because they see the Israelis as illness that should be annihilated from the Muslims’ “body” (the Islamic Middle East)?
    http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Opinion/Article.aspx?id=267575
    Israel actually has been at war with Iran for decades after Iran used its proxies, Hezbollah, Syria, and Hamas, to repeatedly attack Israel on a near continuous basis. Therefore, Israel is more than justified in their interpretation, justification and potentially future response.

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