Iran's Revolutionary Guards fire a Saegheh missile (illustration)
Iran's Revolutionary Guards fire a Saegheh missile (illustration)Reuters

A senior figure in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Mujtabi Du Al-Nour, threatened on Saturday that Iran will destroy Tel Aviv in ten minutes if Israel "makes a mistake" and strikes the Islamic regime's nuclear facilities.

Al-Nour, who is a representative of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a talk with journalists responded to Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman's (Yisrael Beytenu) comments from Friday, when he said Israel should stop talking and start acting by striking the facilities said to be developing nuclear weapons.

"If the Zionists were sure that they would win in war they would already have initiated it, but they don't have the strength to do that - so they just threatened," blustered Al-Nour.

According to the Revolutionary Guards leader, Iran has rockets that can reach the heart of Tel Aviv within six or seven minutes, "even before the rockets of the Zionists reach us."

The threat, coming as it does during Iran's efforts to increase its nuclear output capability by 19-fold and feasibly obtain the ability to equip nuclear warheads on the rockets Al-Nour claims the country possesses, gives extra urgency to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's warnings against a bad nuclear deal.

Netanyahu is posed to address the US Congress on March 3 about the Iranian nuclear problem in a speech that has raised uproar among the left in Israel and the US, given its proximity to March 17 Knesset elections.

The speech is meant to warn against leaving Iran with nuclear capabilities as talks between world powers and Iran approach a March 31 deadline, with Netanyahu warning the deal in its current formation would leave Iran a nuclear threshold state, and a state which has threatened to destroy Israel as Al-Nour reiterated on Saturday.