Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Shamkhani has pushed back against US President Donald Trump’s recent threat that any response to an Iranian attack “will be 1,000 times greater in magnitude”.
In a post on Twitter on Wednesday, the security chief pledged that forces mulling military adventurism against Iran will be “sent to the cemetery”, reminding Washington about the Islamic Republic’s effective defence against Iraq’s invasion of the country in the 1980s.
Donald Trump had tweeted his threat on 14 September after reports cited unnamed American officials as claiming that Iran was hatching plans to assassinate US Ambassador to South Africa Lana Marks in retaliation for the January assassination of Major General Qasem Soleimani, the Commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Qasem Soleimani was assassinated in a Washington-ordered drone strike along with Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy head of Iraq’s Hashd al-Sha’abi, and their companions, as their vehicle was targeted outside Baghdad International Airport on 3 January.
The US maintained that the commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) had been planning numerous attacks against American personnel and infrastructure in the region, although no evidence of the alleged attack plans was presented.
Earlier, a US media report alleged that Tehran was considering the covert operation in retaliation for the killing of Soleimani ahead of the presidential election in the United States in November.
Iranian government spokesman Ali Rabiei similarly cautioned the United States against making another “strategic mistake”.
“We hope that they do not make a new strategic mistake. In that case, they will face our resistance,” Rabiei said at a Tuesday news conference.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif earlier suggested that Donald Trump was being “deceived” by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who sought to “sucker him into the mother of all quagmires by leaking a new false alarm”.
Source » almasdarnews