National flags in Bandar Abbas, Iran
National flags in Bandar Abbas, IraniStock

A senior Iranian parliamentarian threatened on Monday that Israel will be destroyed in half an hour if the United States attacks Iran, the semi-official Iranian Mehr news agency reported.

Mojtaba Zonnour, Chairman of Iranian Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, made the remarks in an interview with the Al-Alam TV network.

“If the US attacks us, only half an hour will remain of Israel’s lifespan,” he declared.

Zonnour said that US President Donald Trump’s claim that he stopped a retaliatory military strike on Iran 10 minutes before it was set to start was a “political bluff”.

“If they (the Americans) had predicted their attack would be successful, they would not have cancelled it and it would definitely have happened,” said the Iranian lawmaker, who added that the US president’s advisors could see the failure of the attack.

Zonnour further claimed that Iran’s power has created deterrence, adding that all 36 US military bases in the region are under Iran’s surveillance.

He described Trump as a businessman who only cares about money and who is not man of war.

The lawmaker’s comments come amid ongoing tensions between the US and Iran which were intensified earlier this month when Iran shot down a US drone, claiming it violated Iranian airspace near the Strait of Hormuz.

US officials have denied that the drone had entered Iranian airspace and stated that the drone was shot down in international airspace over the Strait of Hormuz.

The Pentagon released an image showing the flight path for the drone that was shot down, in an effort to prove that the it had been shot down in international airspace.

Iranian officials regularly threaten to wipe Israel off the map and attack its cities and towns.

Many of the threats against Israel come from Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Last June, Khamenei launched a Twitter tirade against Israel, saying that “the Zionist regime will perish in the not-so-far future.”

Earlier that month, he called Israel “a malignant cancerous tumor in the West Asian region that has to be removed and eradicated”. Khamenei also attacked Netanyahu and branded him a “child killer”.

Even Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who has been described by some Western officials as a “moderate”, has threatened Israel.

This past November, Rouhani called Israel a “cancerous tumor” and urged Muslim nations worldwide to unite and destroy Israel while also adding that Israel is a "fake regime".

Rouhani has in the past called Israel “illegitimate”. Shortly after being elected in 2013, he called Israel an "old wound" that "should be removed". Iranian media later claimed that Rouhani’s remarks were distorted.