If this is not yet another case of mistaken translation, as there have been many in the past, then it appears that the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has made a completely empty threat towards Israel. According to RT,
Iran’s most powerful authority, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the Islamic Republic would raze the cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa “to the ground” if Israel launched a military strike against it. “At times the officials of the Zionist regime [Israel] threaten to launch a military invasion, but they themselves know that if they make the slightest mistake the Islamic Republic will raze Tel Aviv and Haifa to the ground,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said during an address on live state television.
Sure enough, the Zio-media turned that into yet another “proof” that the Iranians are hell-bent on genocide.
The biggest problem with all that is that this threat is nonsensical. Never in the history of warfare has a city been razed by missile attacks. From the Nazi V-1/V-2 strikes on London, to Saddam’s strikes on US forces in the Persian Gulf and on Israel, missiles were never effective in striking cities. In fact, unless they carry nuclear warheads, missiles are not at all suited for that task simply because of the relatively small payloads they carry. For example, the throw-weight of the Iranian Shahab-4 is reportedly less than 1000kg. Sure, 1 ton of high-explosives or cluster warheads will result in a huge explosion, but that is no bigger than the old V-2 rocket were capable of. It will bring down any building, or even a street block, but you would need a huge number of missiles to really raze a major city. Frankly, there are only three ways to raze a city: nuclear warheads, carped bombing from the air, or a massive and sustained artillery barrage. Iran can deliver none of these.
Iran does have an impressive missile force, and Iran’s missiles can painfully strike Israel, these missile can destroy key buildings in Israeli cities, which will create a panic and chaos, and if Hezbollah joins in these strikes with its own missiles the panic in Israel will be total, but even in these conditions no city in Israel will be “razed to the ground”.
The Iranian leadership should be very careful to avoid making bombastic but empty threats as these only damage Iran’s credibility and serve Zionist interests.
The Saker
UPDATE: alas, the translation has been confirmed by PressTV. This is most unfortunate and, I would add, rather uncharacteristic of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Saker, Ayatollah Khameini is not stupid and not oblivious to what the western media would do with such a statement. And I doubt he has to make such statements for domestic morale. Simply stating Iran has the means for a devestating retaliation is enough for that.
Is it possible that he therefore knows something we don’t? Or at the very least he wants his enemies to consider that Iran has capabilities they don’t know about.
@Lysander:Is it possible that he therefore knows something we don’t
Sure, that is true by definition. For example, the Israelis could be right and Iran could have one or more working nuclear warheads, but since Ayatollah Khamenei has himself declared in no uncertain terms that nuclear weapons are immoral and un-Islamic, such an interpretation only further damages the Islamic Republic. As for Iran having some kind of secret super weapon I will dismiss that out of hand as superlatively unlikely.
he wants his enemies to consider that Iran has capabilities they don’t know about
Either this is an empty threat, and that damages Iran, or this is a real, credible, capabilities-based threat, but in this case I cannot imagine what he is talking about.
Sadly, and unless I am proven otherwise, I can only conclude that this statement was a major blunder…
I see it a bit differently. My guess is he meant one of two things.
1) We have lots of missiles that can target the key facilities that Make TA and Haifa run: Electricity, water, water, petrochemical plants, airport, etc. Granted, this is quite different from “razing” a city. In such a case his threat would be hyperbole but very far from ’empty.’
2) Khameini’s speech can be read along with his previous one of two weeks earlier, where he stated that the **ONLY** reason Iran isn’t pursuing nukes is because they are un-Islamic. Khameini stated that, but for that reason alone, Iran could make nukes and nobody would be able to stop them. In other words, we hate nukes and don’t want them, but if pushed against the wall, all bets are off.
My guess is that he meant one (or both) of those things and, even if exaggerated, his threat is not empty.
Thanks and have a great weekend!
@Lysander: maybe. I just really don’t like threats which I, personally, always interpret as a sign of weakness rather than a sign of strength. Sometime, warnings can be useful, and in some rare circumstances I could imagine that a threat could be used to put an adversary under psychological stress. But I cannot recall a single example where I felt that a threat was a good move. But that is a strong bias of mine, I have to admit.
Take care, my friend, and have a great week-end too!
Cheers,
The Saker
I suspect we might be missing some of the background to this which will likely surface down the track, as was the case with the recent North Korean threats.
I was very surprised initially by what was coming out of North Korea, as I had regarded Kim Jong-un as a pretty sharp character who managed the difficult transition without bloodshed, while putting the want-to-be kingmakers firmly in their place with some very adroit political manouvering.
Turns out the US had been performing some extremely aggressive military manouvering around North Korea while making a number of aggressively focused pacts with surrounding countries, especially in the new Japan treaty which gave themselves the ‘right’ for military action against North Korea on a series of flimsy pretexts. This is while boasting about US special forces performing regular actions across the border on North Korean soil.
There was also some manouvering by China in the background that may have played into it, with some analysts believing that Chinese authorities had notified Kim that a military regime change operation had begun in order to take away the steam from under the burgeoning crisis with Japan, that had begun to spiral out of control.
Suspect something similar is at work here in substance, even if the details are different.
Saker,
Lysander might be right..maybe Ayatollah Khamenei knows something, check out what Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Rogozin said about Iran..maybe they both know something and are sending signals?
http://www.globalresearch.ca/breaking-any-conflict-on-iran-is-a-direct-threat-to-russia-s-security-rogozin/28651
Have a great weekend