"The power of the Iranian deterrence is much stronger than nuclear weapons, we have weapons more powerful than nuclear ones," he said in an interview with the Didban Iran portal. According to the general, "Iran is on the verge of creating nuclear weapons," and if Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei makes an appropriate decision and changes his 2003 fatwa prohibiting the creation of such weapons, "an atomic bomb will become a good deterrent for Iran" to Israel.

On October 1, Iran launched a massive missile attack on Israel in response to the killings of key figures in the leadership of the Palestinian Hamas movement, the Shiite Hezbollah organization and the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Tehran said that 90% of the missiles successfully hit their intended targets, but Israel claims that Iran launched about 180 missiles and most of them were intercepted. The Israeli General Staff promised to respond to the attack. For his part, the supreme leader of Iran warned that his country's retaliatory strikes against Israel in this case would be more extensive, reports tass.ru.