“We’ll Level Tel Aviv”: Iran Responds To Israel ‘Preparing’ Strike Plans Against Nuclear Sites

• “We’ll Level Tel Aviv”: Iran Responds To Israel ‘Preparing’ Strike Plans Against Nuclear Sites
  by Tyler Durden, https://www.zerohedge.com/
  Iran has responded to a Fox News interview from late last week wherein Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said that Israel is currently updating its plans to strike Iran’s nuclear program and is prepared to act independently if the United States is not willing. The interview was unusually blunt even for Israel in terms of the defense chief openly stating war plans.
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  Iranian Defense Minister Amir Hatami promptly fired back with a counterthreat on Sunday. He said Iran’s military will level Tel Aviv and Haifa should Israel do anything “out of desperation”.
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  “Sometimes, the Zionist regime [Israel] out of desperation makes big claims against the Islamic Republic of Iran to allegedly threaten it,” Hatami said as cited in The Times of Israel via Iranian state media.
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  “It must know that if it does a damn thing, we will raze Tel Aviv and Haifa to the ground,” he followed up with according to an English translation. Hatami was addressing a military ceremony.
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  He further assured that Iran possesses all the power it needs to “maintain the stability of the country” and said the Islamic Republic can strike close to Israel also via “resistance groups” – which is no doubt a reference to Lebanese Hezbollah and militia groups that have been fighting in Syria.
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  During Gantz’s Fox News statements two days ago, the defense chief had spelled out to the American correspondent that “If the world stops them [Iran] before, it’s much the better. But if not, we must stand independently and we must defend ourselves by ourselves.”
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  “The Iranian nuclear aspiration must be stopped… We must defend ourselves by ourselves,” Gantz had asserted.
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NEW: Israel is improving plans to strike Iranian nuclear targets, Defense Minister Benny Gantz tells mehttps://t.co/19GiARhYoy

— Trey Yingst (@TreyYingst) March 4, 2021

• Israel Has 80-90 Nukes, SIPRI Report Says, as Tel Aviv Continues to Accuse Iran of Nuclear Obsession
  by https://www.rt.com/
  Israel, which routinely accuses Iran of trying to obtain nuclear weapons and pledges to use force to stop Tehran, maintains its own undeclared nuclear arsenal estimated at 80 to 90, according to the latest report by SIPRI.
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  There are nine nations in the world that currently have nuclear weapons, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) says in its newly released yearbook on the state of armaments and international security. The world nuclear stockpile went from 14,465 at the beginning of last year to about 13,865 this year, the report estimates, as the US and Russia were delivering on their promises under the New START Treaty signed in 2010.
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  Israel, which maintains a policy of neither confirming nor denying the possession of nuclear weapons, has between 80 and 90 warheads in its stockpile, the same as the year before, the institute said.
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  It comes as tensions between Iran on one side, and the US and regional ally Israel on the other, continue to mount. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s unsinkable prime minister, has for years waged a campaign accusing the Iranians of having unwavering nuclear ambitions, regardless of the evidence, or lack thereof.
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“Iran doesn’t frighten me and I don’t think it should frighten the American people. They don’t have a bomb. They haven’t made a decision to build one. They don’t have the means to deliver one. And the Israelis have 300 atomic bombs! I mean who presents the existential threat to whom?” – Pat Buchanan (7:58 onwards)

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