"Hezbollah's arsenal not only includes Katyusha missiles, but also Zelzal-2 missiles, which could hit targets as far as 250 kilometres (155 miles), leaving no spot in Israel unreachable," Ali Akbar Mohtashami-Pour, a cleric, told the centrist Shargh newspaper.

Mohtshami-Pour, a former ambassador of the Islamic republic to Syria during the early 1980s, did not say where the missiles were made.

"Hezbollah managed to equip itself in the past five years," he noted, implicitly referring to Israel's pullout from southern Lebanon in 2000.

His comments were backed by the Hezbollah representative in Iran, Abdullah Safeyodin.

"The reason we have aimed at Haifa is because it is a vital target .... but if it is deemed necessary we will target Tel Aviv," Safeyodin was quoted as saying by Iranian papers.

The Iranian cleric also shrugged off any direct Iranian military involvement in the conflict between Hezbollah and the Israeli military.

"In order to cover up their defeats, I am constantly hearing that the Americans and the Israelis claim that the fighters are Iran's military group of Sepah, but it is not true," he said.

Sepah is the elite Revolutionary Guards under the direct command of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

"They are Lebanese Hezbollah fighters, who have become better than their instructors."

"Part of Hezbollah's know-how to defend itself comes from the training they had when fighting along our side during the war (with Iraq from 1980-88). They either fought directly in the battlefield or commanded some operations," said Mohtashami-Pour, who was Iran's interior minister in the mid 1980s.

Iran is one of the main backers of Hezbollah, which captured two Israeli soldiers on July 12 to try to secure the release of Lebanese held by Israel, and triggered a massive Israeli onslaught on Lebanon.

The United States accuses the Islamic regime and its key regional ally Syria of arming and financing Hezbollah and encouraging its attacks on Israel. Both Tehran and Damascus insist they give only moral support to the Shiite militant group.

In an overt show of support, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed on Wednesday that the United States will receive "a destructive punch" for its support for "Zionists", and called on Muslims to stand up against US "bullying and aggression".

"Muslims everywhere must know that the only way to fight the savage wolf of Zionism and the Great Satan's aggression is devoted resistance," Khamenei said in a message to the Islamic world.

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