Teheran – Iran’s president threatens to flatten the Israeli cities Tel Aviv and Haifa, even as the Jewish state is solemnly marking Holocaust Memorial Day and a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the Islamic Republic the modern equivalent of Nazi Germany.
While marking Iran’s annual Army Day, Ebrahim Raisi speaks as fighter jets and helicopters fly overhead in Tehran, and as Iranian submarines sail across its waters during a ceremony carried live by state television.
The day celebrates Iran’s regular military, not its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, whose expeditionary forces operate across the wider Middle East and aid Iranian-allied terror groups like Lebanon’s Hezbollah. The Guard also routinely has tense encounters with the US Navy.
“Enemies, particularly the Zionist regime, have received the message that any tiny action against [our] country will prompt a harsh answer from the armed forces, which will accompany the destruction of Haifa and Tel Aviv,” Raisi says.
