April 18, 2024 (EIRNS)—The man in charge of Iran’s Nuclear Facilities Protection and Security Command, Brig. Gen. Ahmad Haqtalab, stated that if Israel targets Iran’s nuclear facilities, Iran will target Israel’s in turn. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) senior commander said that, if Israel “wants to use the threat of attacking our country’s nuclear facilities as an instrumental means to put pressure on Iran, a revision of the nuclear doctrine and policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran and a departure from the previously announced considerations is likely and conceivable,” as reported in the semi-official Tasnim News. “Although according to international protocols and standards and the regulations of the International Atomic Energy Agency, all countries are advised to refrain from attacking nuclear facilities, the Islamic Republic of Iran has always been prepared to confront these threats from the beginning.”
The commander reviewed a history of Israel’s assaults against, and sabotage of, Iran’s nuclear industry, and stressed that Israel’s nuclear facilities would now be targeted. The recent murderous attack on an Iranian consulate proved to them that Israel is outside of international law. Even though Iranian leadership has stated that all weapons of mass destruction are not compatible with Islam, and that nuclear sites are considered off limits for military action, Israel’s bombing of the consulate proves that it doesn’t care about acting within the rules. So, the days of Israel acting with no consequences are over: “By the grace of God … we are prepared to confront any threat from the Zionist regime. The nuclear facilities of the Zionist enemy have been identified, and we have the necessary information about all the targets, and in other words, our fingers are on the trigger of powerful missiles to destroy the specified targets in response to their possible action.”
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates that Israel has about 80 nuclear weapons. Since Iran has no such weapons, a possible Iranian retaliation might only be against Israeli civilian nuclear components, but Haqtalab did not explicitly rule out an attack on Israel’s nuclear weapons.
