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Trump is ‘deadly serious’ about not allowing Iran to carry nukes
National Security Advisor Michael Waltz joins ‘Fox News Sunday’ to discuss President Donald Trump’s move to negotiate an end to the Russia-Ukraine war and tensions between Israel and Iran.
JERUSALEM — After President Donald Trump announced he was reimposing his maximum economic sanctions pressure campaign on the Islamic Republic of Iran, a high-level Iranian general declared Thursday his nation will wage an attack designed to obliterate Israel.
Tehran’s rogue regime launched two massive aerial attacks against the Jewish state, a key U.S. ally in the Middle East, in 2024.
According to Iranian regime media outlets, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) General Ebrahim Jabbari said, “Operation True Promise 3 will be carried out at the right time, with precision, and on a scale sufficient to destroy Israel and raze Tel Aviv and Haifa to the ground.”
Rockets fired from Iran are seen over Jerusalem from Hebron, West Bank, Oct. 1, 2024. The Israeli army announced missiles were fired from Iran toward Israel, and sirens were heard across the country, especially in Tel Aviv. (Wisam Hashlamoun/Anadolu via Getty Images)
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Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar fired back at Jabbari’s threat on X, saying, “If the Jewish people have learned anything from history, it is this: if your enemy says his goal is to annihilate you – believe him. We are ready.”
Tom Gross, a Middle East expert, told Fox News Digital, “The Israeli foreign minister is right, of course. Genocidal threats from Iran need to be taken seriously. If previous threats by Iran and its Hamas terror allies had been taken more seriously, the Oct. 7 onslaught might have been prevented.”
Jabbari’s remarks seem to also be aimed at setting up a showdown between Trump and Iran’s regime. Jabbari made his declaration to destroy Israel when he spoke to paramilitary forces during military drills called “The Great Exercise of Prophet Mohammad’s Power.”
“The United States can do nothing against Yemen,” Jabbari said in an apparent reference to the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the Iran-backed Houthi movement in Yemen.
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A model of a missile during a celebration in Tehran, Iran, April 15, 2024, after the IRGC attack on Israel. (Majid Asgaripour/West Asia News Agency; Reuters/File Photo)
The Islamic Republic has Trump in its crosshairs with assassination plans since the president ordered a military strike that eliminated IRGC General Qassem Soleimani in 2020.
“If they are trying to send a message to Trump, they should be careful,” Gross said. “The U.S. president had no problem dispatching the previous head of the revolutionary guards in his first term, and, since then, the regime has tried to assassinate Trump, who now has unfinished business with the regime in Tehran.”
Fox News Digital reported that the U.S. State Department said Soleimani was responsible for 17% of U.S. troops killed during the Iraq war — over 600 military personnel.
Trump responded to Iran’s plan to murder him by declaring if Tehran assassinated him, “That would be a terrible thing for them to do.
“If they did that, they would be obliterated. That would be the end. … There won’t be anything left.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in the Kirya HQ during the Strike in Iran (Avi Ohayon/ GPO)
Gross said “Iran’s Islamic regime may be nervous, having lost its allies Hezbollah and Assad, and perhaps Russia too. The regime may be threatening Israel to try and scare off Washington and Jerusalem from moving against the regime’s nuclear weapons program.”
Banafsheh Zand, an Iranian-American expert on the Islamic Republic, told Fox News Digital, “The Khomeinist regime has never hidden its intentions, yet the West has continually chosen to ignore these threats. Even as the Shia regime destroyed Iran and its people and launched terrorist attacks around the world, Western leaders ignored it. They could have stood with the people of Iran, the region, and the Islamic world but willfully chose not to.”
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Ali Khamenei is the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic Iran, a regime the U.S. State Department classified as the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism.
Zand complained that “Western leaders have proven to be short-sighted, entirely out of touch, greedy and penny-wise and pound-foolish. And here we are, 46 years later, and the cycle of slipshod choices goes on and on, putting Western citizenry in impending harm’s way as well.”
Benjamin Weinthal reports on Israel, Iran, Syria, Turkey and Europe. You can follow Benjamin on Twitter @BenWeinthal, and email him at [email protected]