(AP) – The spokesman for Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard insisted Friday that Tehran was still building missiles, seeking to counter a claim by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that it no longer could.

Gen. Ali Mohammad Naeini also said the Iran war would go on. A short time later, Iranian state television reported Naeini was killed in an airstrike.

“These people expect the war to continue until the enemy is completely exhausted,” the general said of the Iranian public. “This war must end when the shadow of war is lifted from the country.”