Ex-Iranian Revolutionary Guards Chief: 'We're Looking for Excuse to Raze Tel Aviv to the Ground'

TEL AVIV – A senior Iranian official who was the commander-in-chief of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards warned that Iran is just looking for an excuse to “raze Tel Aviv to the ground,” accusing Israel of helping the U.S. in its assassination of top commander Qassem Soleimani.

Asked on Lebanon’s Hezbollah-affiliated al-Mayadeen TV station whether Iran planned on following through with its threats to attack Israel in the event of a war with the U.S., adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Mohsen Rezaee answered in the affirmative.

“You should have no doubt about this. We would raze Tel Aviv to the ground for sure. We have been looking for such a pretext,” Rezaei said according to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

“If they (the U.S.) do something, we can use it as a pretext to attack Israel, because Israel played a role in the martyrdom of General Soleimani,” he said.

Rezaee, who serves as the secretary for Iran’s Expediency Council, said Israel was to blame for revealing Soleimani’s whereabouts to the Americans.

“We were waiting for the Americans to give us a pretext to strike Tel Aviv, just like we attacked Ayn Al-Assad,” he said.

Iran struck the Ayn Al-Assad U.S. air base in Iraq in response to the killing of Soleimani.

In January, Rezaee made similar threats against Israeli cities.

“Iran’s revenge against America for the assassination of Soleimani will be severe… Haifa and Israeli military centers will be included in the retaliation,” he said.

Speaking to al-Mayadeen, Rezaee also claimed that Iran new every movement made by U.S. troops in the region and that they were under Tehran’s “control.”

“Naturally, we have precise information, thanks be to Allah. All the American bases are under our surveillance now. All the American aircraft carriers are under our control,” he said.

“We know the number of American ships in the Indian Ocean and the Sea of Oman, and where they are in the Persian Gulf, and what they have in Qatar and Bahrain, and [we know about] their activity in Iraq,” Rezaei said.

He added that Tehran also knew which hotels American soldiers stayed at, what they ate and who their friends were.

“Our information is very precise. We bombed the Ayn Al-Assad base on the basis of detailed calculations. We knew that it was a very important site for the Americans that we had to strike,” he said.

Separately Tuesday, an Iranian military spokesman vowed that the “Zionist regime will disappear from earth.”