Iranian Officials Make Threats of Massive Retaliation for Israeli Strike
October 25, 2024
12:39 PM
Reading time: 3 minutes
The New York Times news portal posted a report on Thursday evening saying that Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has given Iranian military commanders orders to prepare retaliatory strikes on Israel in the event of an Israeli strike. Two Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps officials quoted in the report said that Iran's response would be proportional to Israel's strike. In an apparent attempt at a proposal for a face saving exit, the IRGC sources said that if Israel restricts its strike to military warehouses and bases, Iran might not respond at all.
The officials then said that if Israel strikes nuclear sites or oil facilities, or if there are large numbers of casualties or damage, or if Israel assassinates any high-level regime officials, the gloves will come off and Iran will respond with a massive strike of up to 1,000 ballistic missiles. They said there might also be stepped up attacks on Israeli interests and even US bases in the region by Iran's proxy forces.
In a related story, IRGC chief Hossein Salami made a fiery speech in which he said that Israelis shouldn't count on the US-deployed THAAD system to protect them from Iran's ballistic missiles, claiming that Iran's last barrage on October 1st had already proven that its ballistic missiles wouldn't be stopped by THAAD, which was not in place on October 1st and played no part in defending Israel on that occasion.
"The Zionist entity is wrong, and the 'True Promise 2' operation proved the failure of its defense systems. The THAAD system will not succeed in protecting it," he said.
Meanwhile, regime officials set up a mural in "Palestine Square" in Teheran this week including photos of Israeli hostages kidnapped into Gaza by Hamas on October 7, splattered with blood and captioned with the words “no hostage will be released” in Hebrew.