Iranian Chief of Staff Hassan Firozabad announced on Wednesday, November 16th, that powerful explosion that rocked a military base claiming 17 lives, was caused by testing a weapon capable of delivering a “strong punch in the mouth” to Israel.

According to reports from Iran, the extremely powerful blast rattled the windows in area villages, claiming the life of General Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, reportedly an architect of that country’s missile program.

While reports shortly following the blast speculated, pointing at the Mossad, but Iran has denied this and reports the blast was the cause of an accident during weapons development, sending yet another threat to Jerusalem amid growing speculation that Israel may be left with no alternative other than launching a strike against Tehran’s nuclear facilities.

While America, many European nations, Russia and China have not offered viable alternatives to a military strike, they remain adamantly opposed to such a move by Israel. Just his week, a former head of Saudi Arabian intelligence warned Israel that a military strike would carry “catastrophic consequences”.

“This recent event and explosion had no relation to either Israel or America,” the Iranian military commander was quoted as saying by the Iran Students’ News Agency. “Except for the fact that the product of the research done at this facility would have delivered a strong punch in the mouth of Israel and its occupying regime.”

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)