Iranian Nuclear Chief: Israel Should Check Its Capabilities Before Threatening to Attack Tehran

Last month, the Israeli media reported that the Jewish state's government had approved a budget of 5 billion shekels (about $1.5 billion) to prepare for a possible attack against Iran's nuclear facilities.

Mohammad Eslami, the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, has warned Israel against threatening to strike the Islamic Republic's nuclear sites.

In a Saturday interview with the Yemeni television network al-Masirah, Eslami urged Tel Aviv to look in the mirror first and check its capabilities before making threats.

He spoke after Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, cautioned late last month that Israel would be made to pay a grave economic price if it dares attack the Islamic Republic.

"Instead of allocating [a] $1.5 billion budget for atrocities against Iran, the Zionist regime should focus on providing tens of thousands of billions of dollars [in] funding to repair the damage that is going to be caused by Iran's shocking response", Shamkhani tweeted.

The warning came in the wake of Israeli media reports that the country's authorities had approved $1.5 billion in funding for preparations to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, with the money said to be pumped into aircraft and intelligence-gathering drones as well as customised armaments for strikes on heavily fortified underground facilities.

As for Eslami's remarks, they were made as Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Naftali Bennett said the Jewish state is "very worried" about world powers possibly removing anti-Iranian sanctions in exchange for "insufficient" caps by Tehran on its nuclear programme.

"This is the message that we are relaying in every manner, whether to the Americans or to the other countries negotiating with Iran", Bennett told a cabinet meeting on Saturday.

The remarks followed a report by The Wall Street Journal that the US may be setting up a so-called "less-for-less" nuclear deal with Iran that would offer partial sanctions relief to Tehran in exchange for a rollback or a freeze on nuclear work in the Islamic Republic.

While American officials have called such a deal the product of brainstorming, Tel Aviv claimed that a partial deal with Iran would be a gift to the new government of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.

In May 2018, then-US President Donald Trump unilaterally pulled the US out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the Iran nuclear deal, and reimposed crippling economic sanctions against the Iranian economy. Exactly a year later, Tehran announced that it had started abandoning its JCPOA commitments, including those related to uranium enrichment.

Following the election of US President Joe Biden, negotiations to revive the agreement kicked off in April but stalled in June, when Raisi was elected. Both sides have since confirmed that talks regarding sanctions and the nuclear deal are scheduled to resume in Vienna on 29 November.