Iran will "blow up the heart" of Israel if attacked by the Jewish state or the United States, an aide to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was quoted yesterday as saying.

"Even if one American or Zionist missile hits our land, before the dust is settled, Iranian missiles will blow up the heart of Israel," state news agency IRNA quoted Khamenei's deputy represen-tative to the elite Revolutionary Guards, MojtabaZolnour, as saying.

Iranian officials have repeatedly said that Tehran would carry' out severe reprisals if Israel or the United States attack the country.

The United States and its

regional ally Israel have never ruled out a military option to stop Tehran’s nuclear drive, which the West says is aimed at making nuclear weapons while Iran says i t is solely for peaceful ends.

At the end of September, armed forces chief of staff General Hassan Firouzabadi dismissed Israeli threats against Iran, saying the Jewish state was a "paper tiger."