Over the past several weeks, as Israeli officials have repeatedly threatened to preemptively strike Iran’s nuclear facilities—perhaps even before the U.S. elections in November—Iranian leaders have retaliated by launching one verbal assault after another. On Jerusalem Day last week, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for the Zionist regime to be obliterated, saying Israel was an “insult to humanity.” Two days after that, Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, referred to Israel as a “cancerous tumor in the heart of the Islamic world.”
Given the heightened tensions over the prospect of a regional war, Iran’s leaders certainly don’t seem to be losing sleep over the possibility of an Israeli strike. On Tuesday, Iranian M.P. Evaz Heydarpur brushed aside Israel’s threats as little more than psychological warfare. And even if Israel does attack, he said, “Iran will not accept any ceasefire request by that regime’s allies and will attack the occupied lands by missiles until all the Zionists die or surrender.”
