Iranian Defense Minister Mohammad Reza Ashtiani on Monday dismissed threats by Israeli officials and warned of a "crushing" response.
"Any unwise and stupid measure will trigger a crushing response from Iran that would inflict heavy costs on the aggressors," Ashtiani said, according to the Xinhua news agency.
"The Islamic Republic has made it clear that its advanced defense power is solely aimed at safeguarding the country's security and protecting the borders, in the meantime, it will deal with any potential threat or act of aggression," he added.
While Ashtiani did not specify which threat from Israel he was referring to, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett recently called for an international response to a damning International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on Iran.
The IAEA report had criticized Iran for stonewalling an investigation into its past nuclear activities and jeopardizing important monitoring work.
In response to Bennett, the spokesperson of Iran’s Foreign Ministry blasted Israel and tweeted, “Outlaw Israeli regime—sitting on illicit nukes & refusing to join NPT—again threatens NPT member Iran; a nation w world's most inspected nuclear program.”
“The West's darling is a habitual extorter. But world has woken up to its destabilizing nature. Iran reserves right to respond,” added the spokesperson, Saeed Khatibzadeh.
Iranian leaders regularly threaten both the US and Israel. Hossein Salami, Commander-in-Chief General of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), recently warned that the Iranian Quds Force has mastered the art of defeating America's policy, strategy, and power.
On Israel, Salami said that the "Zionist entity" has recently exposed its vulnerability, which is its commercial shipping around the world.
Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, also regularly threatens Israel. Several months ago, he called on Muslim nations to keep fighting against Israel, which he said was not a state but a "terrorist garrison" against Palestinian Arabs.
In one incident, he posted a tweet in which he threatened to implement the Nazi "Final Solution" against the Jewish state.
After then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to those threats, Khamenei asserted that, in using the term “Final Solution”, he did not refer to Jews but rather only to the State of Israel.
Khamenei was later at it again, threatening that "the Zionist virus will not last long and the Zionist regime will not survive - and will be destroyed.”
(Arutz Sheva’s North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Sukkot in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)