Iranian Commander: ‘Erasing Israel Off the Map’ Is ‘Non-Negotiable’

Mohammad Reza Naqdi, head of the Basij militia unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, has surfaced to reassure the world that death for Israel is still very much on the table on the eve of the P+5 nuclear talks, and will never be negotiated away as part of any nuclear deal with President Obama.

Israel National News reports Naqdi saying that “erasing Israel off the map” is “non-negotiable” on Tuesday.

This is the same officer who previously boasted that Iran would keep arming Palestinian terrorists in the West Bank until Israel was annihilated.  “The Zionists should know that the next war won’t be confined to the present borders and the Mujahedeen will push them back,” he said in 2014.

The unit Naqdi commands is described as “a religious volunteer force established in 1979 by the country’s revolutionary leaders, and has served as a moral police and to suppress dissent” by Israel National News. “In January, a draft law that would give greater powers to the Basij to enforce women’s compulsory wearing of the veil was ruled unconstitutional,” the newspaper expands, “The force holds annual maneuvers, sometimes with regular Iran units.”

Iran has all sorts of special units and militias leashed by tenuous chains of command, giving the mullahs plenty of deniable tools for starting trouble in other countries, along with the notorious Quds Force unit explicitly authorized to carry out war crimes beyond Iran’s borders. The Iranians have not seen any need to deny their mischief during the Obama era, since his interests align so clearly with their regional ambitions… but rest assured that if the Supreme Leader needs a way to ensure some of what Obama plans to give him this week detonates in Tel Aviv, or Paris, a few years from now, he will have plenty of deniable “rogue” militia operatives at his disposal.

Naqdi also threatened the Saudis currently making war against Iran’s clients in Yemen, saying they would “have a fate like the fate of Saddam Hussein.” He has previously played the role of renegade “hard-liner,” criticizing Iranian president Hassan Rohani and his fellow “moderates” as “fake revolutionaries, who joined the ranks of revolutionaries to acquire leadership and riches, and speak about the necessity to make compromises.”