Moshe Ya'alon
Moshe Ya'alonYonatan Sindel/Flash 90

Iran has threatened Israel once again on Friday - this time, due an Iranian news agency's mistranslation of a comment by Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon (Likud).

Semi-official Iranian news agency Fars claimed Ya'alon threatened civilians in Lebanon outright during a series of comments over Israel's security situation earlier this month, wherein the minister discussed the possibility of civilian casualties being likely during the next war with Iran's terror proxy Hezbollah. 

As a result, Iran scrambled to threaten Israel with retaliation.

“Iran, with the help of Hezbollah and its friends, is capable of destroying Tel Aviv and Haifa in case of military aggression on the part of the Zionists,” General Yahya Rahim Safavi, military adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, stated on state television. He was quoted by Al-Arabiya.  

“I don’t think the Zionists would be so unintelligent as to create a military problem with Iran,” the general said. “They know the strength of Iran and Hezbollah.”

Fars quoted Ya'alon as saying, "we are going to hurt Lebanese civilians to include kids of the family [sic] ... we are going to do it in any round of hostilities in the future."

However, what he actually stated is that Hezbollah has hidden more than 100,000 rockets among its civilian population, and that Israel may "have" to hit civilians in order to destroy the arsenal. 

"If we don’t intercept the rocket-launchers in advance, civilians will be hurt, if not killed," he said, according to the Daily Mail. "If we hit the launchers, it will hurt or kill Lebanese civilians."