The commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps announced that “Iran will pursue and seek to destroy any
aggressor, even one carrying out a limited attack, ... after attacks on Saudi oil sites” on Sept. 14, “which both Riyadh and American officials blamed on Iran,” Reuters reported, quoting Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami as saying that “a limited aggression will not remain limited” and that Tehran “will pursue any aggressor.”
He added that they “will continue until the full destruction of any aggressor.”
Put aside for the moment whether the Iranian military has the capability to destroy either Saudi Arabia or the United States, which seems at best doubtful. The enemy nation has the nerve to publicly assert that it will defend itself against military assault from the US, the Saudis, and allied emirates, showing their impertinence in describing hypothetical airstrikes against IRGC sites as acts of “aggression,” when the proper terms are “defensive” and “limited.”
The report cited Brig. Gen. Ghadir Nezami, identified as the “head of
international affairs and defense diplomacy at Iran’s
General Staff of the Armed Forces,” declared that Tehran, Beijing, and Moscow “would begin joint naval exercises in the Arabian Sea and the North Indian Ocean in the near future, according to Iran’s semiofficial news agency.”
It is obviously outrageous that a country under crippling economic sanctions would seek to conduct war games with other regional powers, or declare that it would defend itself from enemy attack. If the tables were turned, there is no doubt the United States, by now seen by most of the global population as the greatest threat to world peace, would do exactly the same thing.