Iran ready to 'pound' Israel

Iran is ready to hit centers of Israeli support if the Islamic republic is attacked by its adversary's military forces, a military chief said.

Tehran blamed Israel for a mid-November explosion at a weapons depot belonging to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The explosion at the Aghadir missile base, 25 miles southwest of Tehran, killed Maj. Gen. Hassan Moghaddam, acknowledged as the architect of Iran's strategic missiles forces.

Maj. Gen. Gholam Ali Rashid, deputy chairman of the Iranian Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the semiofficial Fars News Agency that Israel would pay the price for military aggression.

"We are fully prepared to pound all the centers of the Zionists through reliance upon the missile power which has been gained through the efforts made by Great Martyr Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam," he said.

Iran last week embarked on a military exercise that it said encompassed about 300,000 square miles along the country's eastern border.

Israel was suspected of launching preparations for a military strike on Iranian nuclear installations. The Israeli military destroyed nuclear targets in Iran in the 1980s and in Syria in 2007.

The saber rattling comes as the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, said it believed Iran was carrying out some scientific research that was tied to the development of a nuclear bomb.