Iran says again Israel must be destroyed, and Hezbollah will fire the missiles

This week there was a double memorial service at the Hazrat Zahra mosque in Tehran.

The first person being remembered was General Ahmad Kazemi, commander of Iran's Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution who died in a plane crash in 2006, which some allege was sabotage.

The other was not for an Iranian at all, but for the Hezbollah commander Hassan Lakkis, assassinated a month ago in Beirut.

One of the facts revealed at the memorial is that Hezbollah was "the first nucleus of the resistance in Lebanon was formed by forces of the [Iranian] Revolutionary Guards," and that Lakkis was trained by Iran and had a "special loyalty to Imam Khomeini."

The ceremony showed (yet again) how Hezbollah is nothing more or less than a remote arm of Iran's military.

Two banners were set up at the service, showing two quotes: one from Ayatollah Khomeini and the other from Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. The quote from Khomeini says "Israel must vanish from the entire world."

The Farsi in the Nasrallah photo says "to target Israel, we need only a few missiles." They mistranslated "a few" as "some."

The juxtaposition of the two banners makes an unmistakable statement: Iran is threatening Israel, militarily, and Hezbollah is the means that it intends to use to accomplish that.

At the event, which had many senior Iranian military figures, officials spoke of a "big surprise that Hezbollah has in store for Israel, and that Hezbollah warehouses are filled with highly accurate missiles aimed at Israel. Another speaker spoke of a time, not so far in the future, that will witness "an apocalyptic battle" across the region for the Holy Land.

Iran is supplying even more advanced missiles to Hezbollah - today.

A few years ago when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that "Israel should be wiped off the map/off the pages of time" there was a lot of apologetics saying it was a mistranslation, or that he didn't mean "militarily," or that Ahmadinejad was just a blowhard and didn't set Iranian policy so it was no big deal.

Iran is saying that Hezbollah, as an arm of Iran, will wipe Israel out. There is no ambiguity here. But people who refuse to see the truth will always find reasons to ignore the facts, even when the facts are printed on large banners in English.