Settle down, tough guy.
Via JPost:
Hojjat al-Eslam Ali Shirazi , the representative of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to the Islamic Republic’s Qods Force, said this week that Iran needed just ’24 hours and an excuse’ to destroy Israel.
In his first public interview for a year, reported in the Persian-language Jahan News, which is close to the regime, Shirazi said if Israel attacked Iran the Islamic Republic would be able to turn the war in to a war of attrition which would lead to Israel’s destruction. “If such a war does happen, it would not be a long war, and it would benefit the entire Islamic Ummah [global community of Muslims]. We have expertise in fighting wars of attrition and Israel cannot fight a war of attrition,” he said, referring to Iran’s eight year war of attrition against Iraq.
Khamenei appointed Shirazi a year ago as his representative to the Qods Force, the highly secretive extraterritorial wing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), which reports directly to the Supreme Leader.
The Qods Force, whose exact size is unknown, is responsible for IRGC operations outside Iran, including in Syria. In August, this year, the US Department of the Treasury identified the Qods Force as “a conduit for Iran’s material support to the Syrian General Intelligence Directorate”, and in 2011 designated Suleimani as a terrorist entity for his personal support for the Syrian regime.
In his interview, Shirazi said that Israel was “close to annihilation” and wanted to attack Iran as an act of desperation.