Iran warns Israel to lose 10,000 troops

TEHRAN - A senior Iranian official said that Israel would lose at least 10,000 troops in the event of a military strike on the Islamic republic, Press TV reported on Sunday.

"If the Israelis attack, Iran's deterrent power would deal a mortal blow to them and the Israeli death toll would not be less than 10,000. Therefore, they would be stopped soon," Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran's Expediency Council, was quoted as saying.

"We don't want war, but are fully prepared to defend our country against any strike. Of course the Zionists don't dare to invade Iran and only speak of war to win concessions from the next U.S. president," said Rezaei, a former chief of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC).

The United States and Israel have not ruled out the possibility of a strike on Iran's nuclear energy facilities.

The United States and its Western allies believe Iran is working toward a nuclear weapon capability. Tehran denies that, saying its atomic program is "peaceful".  

Rezaei also accused the West of trying to derail the Islamic Awakening movement by interfering in Syria.

The officials in the Islamic republic prefer to use their own-coined term of "Islamic Awakening" for the worldly-acknowledged term of "Arab Spring" movements with their aim to topple the traditional totalitarian governmental structures in the Arab world.