‘Just one wrong move’: Iranian newspaper shows Israeli targets all lined up

The Tehran Times front page has hundreds of points marked in red under the headline “Just one wrong move!”

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Iran’s premier English-language newspaper published Wednesday a map of Israel showing hundreds of points throughout the country where it could strike if Israel attacks it, under the headline “Just one wrong move!”

The threatening headline is followed by a clear warning, with the opening line, “An intensification of the Israeli military threats against Iran seems to suggest that the Zionist regime has forgotten that Iran is more than capable of hitting them from anywhere.”

The article then quotes a line from Tuesday’s Yediot Ahronot paper that Israel’s most recent strike in Syria is “a direct message” to Tehran. It goes on to explain in some depth the IDF’s plans for a massive aerial exercise over the Mediterranean Sea in the spring that will test its capability of hitting Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Iran’s top army commander, Major General Mohammad Bagheri, said in the piece that the country’s forces are in a state of “maximum vigilance” and are ready for a counterstrike.

“At the strategic level, we do not intend to strike anyone, but at the operational and tactical level we are ready for a decisive response and a quick and tough offensive against the enemy,” he said.

Looking like the red, rocket alert signs that the Israeli government uses, the points on the map stretch all the way to Eilat at Israel’s southern tip. Dozens overlap each other especially on the eastern and western borders. On the seafront, they are crowded from central Raanana down to the Gaza Strip, where they veer inland to avoid the coastal enclave to mark the entire border with Israel. They then continue in a line down a good section of the Sinai border with Egypt. The borderline with Jordan between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea is also teeming with red marks, as is most of the center of the country, including Jerusalem.

Starting with the first time rockets were launched at Israel, when Iraq fired off a few dozen Scuds in the 1991 Gulf War, and throughout all the airborne attacks led by either Hamas or Hezbollah in subsequent years, Jerusalem has been pretty much left alone. The assumption has been that the Arabs do not want to risk hitting their compatriots or holy places in Israel’s capital.

If the target bank is accurate, this time seems to be different. Just north of the capital is a sea of red as well, which would put part of the Palestinian Authority in danger. Even the major Palestinian cities of Nablus and Jenin, which are more isolated from Jewish towns, are marked by single red dots. And at the top of the map, while the northern border with Lebanon and Syria is buried under red circles, some of them pin places in Lebanon itself although the country is basically controlled by Iranian terrorist proxy Hezbollah.

The article ends with a warning given in 2013 by then-leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who said that while Israel was “threatening to strike militarily…they must know that if they make a mistake, the Islamic Republic will destroy Tel Aviv and Haifa.”