TEHRAN — Iran’s Revolutionary Guards yesterday predicted Hezbollah would destroy Israel, in a new verbal onslaught against the Zionist state after the murder of Imad Mughnieh.
“In the near future, we will witness the destruction of Israel, the aggressor, this cancerous microbe Israel, at the able hands of the soldiers of the community of Hezbollah,” Revolutionary Guards commander Muhammad Ali Jafari was quoted by the Fars news agency as saying.
Jafari’s comments came in a condolence message to Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah after the murder last week in Damascus of Mughnieh.
“With the martyrdom of this true Muslim, the intentions of all revolutionary and combatant Muslims, especially the comrades of this dear martyr, will without doubt become firmer against the Zionist regime,” Jafari said.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has already blamed Israel for killing Mughnieh, hailing him as a “great” man whose death would serve to increase resistance against Israel.
In a sign of Iran’s respect for Mughnieh, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki attended his funeral in Beirut on Thursday and gave a speech.
Iran has a long-standing policy of non-recognition of Israel but its rhetoric against Israel has sharpened during the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Ahmadinejad has provoked international outrage by repeatedly predicting that Israel is doomed to disappear. He also courted more controversy by playing down the scale of the Holocaust.
Iran insists its position is in no way anti-Semitic but anti-Zionist, pointing to the continued existence in the country of the largest Jewish community in the Middle East after Israel.
Israel, while welcoming the death of Mughnieh, has denied any link to his murder. Meanwhile, the US intelligence chief has publicly suggested that internal elements in Syria or even Hezbollah could be to blame.
“There’s some evidence that it may have been internal Hezbollah. It may have been Syria. We don’t know yet, and we’re trying to sort that out,” Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell told Fox News.
The Syrian pro-government Al-Watan newspaper reported on Sunday that the authorities have detained Arab suspects for questioning in connection with the murder.
