The commander of the Aerospace Forces of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, said on Thursday that "his country will destroy Israel if it launches any aggression against Iran."
Hajizadeh added, in a speech he delivered on the sidelines of a ceremony commemorating the death of the founder of the Iranian missile industry, Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, that Israeli officials know that they can be the initiators of the war, but the end will be in our hands, and the inevitable end is the destruction of this entity, as he put it.
Hajizadeh described the Iranian drones as a thorn in the eyes of the enemies, stressing that his country's defense and missile capabilities and drones are not negotiable with any country.
These statements come a day after statements by Israeli Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi, in which he said that "the army is intensifying its preparations for a possible attack on Iranian nuclear facilities."
Israel opposes US efforts to revive the nuclear agreement that Iran signed in 2015 with the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany, but Washington withdrew from it in 2018 during the rule of former President Donald Trump.
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said that "Tehran has made a huge leap forward over the past three years, and its ability to enrich uranium has reached its maximum."
Bennett accused Iran of trying to buy time to acquire nuclear weapons.