Iran threatens to ‘level Tel Aviv,’ if Israel attacks

Tehran: Tel Aviv will be "leveled to the ground" if Israel attacks Iran, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not escape with his life, a senior official in the Islamic republic threatened Tuesday.

He comments came in response to Netanyahu's speech on Sunday at the Munich Security Conference, in which he brandished a piece of what he called an Iranian drone downed in Israeli airspace and threatened direct military action against Iran.

"About Netanyahu's unwise words, I should say that if they carry out the slightest unwise move against Iran, we will level Tel Aviv to the ground," Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran's Expediency Council and former chief of the country's Revolutionary Guards, told Hezbollah-affiliated Arabic-language al-Manar TV channel Monday.

Adding a personal threat to the Israeli leader's life, Rezaei added that Tehran "will not give Netanyahu any opportunity to flee," Fars News reported.

Netanyahu singled out Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in his speech at the security conference, as he lifted up a piece of the drone's wreckage.

"Mr. Zarif, do you recognize this? You should, it's yours. You can take back with you a message to the tyrants of Tehran -- do not test Israel's resolve!" proclaimed Netanyahu earlier to the audience, which included Zarif.

The drone, which allegedly entered northern Israel from Syria on February 10, was shot down by an Israeli attack helicopter. In response to the incursion, Israeli jets attacked the mobile command center from which it was operated, the army said.

During the reprisal raid, an Israeli F-16 fighter jet that took part in the operation was shot down by a Syrian army. 

The flareup on the northern border marked the first direct confrontation between the Israeli air force and the Iranian forces on Israeli territory. Israel has warned of growing Iranian entrenchment in neighboring Syria and has said it will not abide an Iranian military presence on its borders.

"Israel will not allow Iran's regime to put a noose of terror around our neck," Netanyahu said during his speech. "We will act without hesitation to defend ourselves. And we will act if necessary not just against Iran's proxies that are attacking us, but against Iran itself."

Dismissing Netanyahu's address as a "theatrical move and a childish game," Rezaei claimed that "US and Israeli leaders don't know Iran and don't understand the power of resistance, and therefore they continuously face defeat.

"Today, the situation of the US and Israel indicates their fear of the Zionist regime's collapse and of the US's decline," he added.

The comment echoed Zarif's response to Netanyahu in Munich, downplaying the drone stunt as a "cartoonish circus" and saying it "doesn't deserve the dignity of a response."