TEL AVIV – A retired Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) general, who was deployed to Syria as a senior Iranian commander of Shia troops, said in an interview last week that Iran’s ultimate goal in forming a Shia army is to destroy Israel by 2039.
Brig. Gen. Mohammad Ali Falaki, who is serving with the IRGC’s Afghan Fatemiyoun Division, said that the Fatemiyoun’s establishment facilitated “the formation of a Shia liberation army whose commander is Hajj Qassam Soleimani,” the head of the Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force, the Long War Journal reported.
The army’s chief goal is to eliminate Israel, Falaki said.
“Forming the first nucleus of the liberation army has the objective that, God willing, we will not have anything called Israel in 23 years,” he said, adding that Iranian-led troops have already been deployed on Israel’s border.
Falaki lauded the Afghan Fatemiyoun’s willingness to obey Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He declared that the IRGC was creating “unity among ethnicities” and “unity among nations.”
The IRGC and its various proxies “form a global jihadi network that answers to Tehran,” the Long War Journal noted.
Iranian threats against Israel are ongoing despite the U.S.-led nuclear agreement signed in July of last year. That same month, former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said Israel was an “alien existence” that would eventually “be wiped off the map.”
A week after the nuclear deal was struck, Khamenei blessed crowds who were chanting “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.” A few months prior, the Obama administration brushed off the Ayatollah’s oft-repeated “Death to America” rhetoric, saying it was “intended for a domestic political audience.”
In September of last year, Khamenei vowed that Israel would be destroyed within 25 years.
Half a year later, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Naqdi, the commander of the Basij militia, said the destruction of Israel was “nonnegotiable.”