‘No American will be safe’: Top general warns Iranian armed forces fully ready for retaliation

Iran’s top military official warns that any miscalculation by the Islamic Republic’s enemies would trigger a forceful response, saying the country is fully prepared for confrontation and retaliation.

Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Abdolrahim Mousavi made the remarks on Monday, saying the servicemen were prepared to respond decisively to threats. “We think only of victory. We have no fear of the enemy’s superficial might, and we are fully ready for confrontation and to deliver a retaliatory slap,” he stated.

The Iranian nation has long stood firm against the arrogant and aggressive nature of the United States, forcing it into “repeated defeats,” including in the recent “complex, multidimensional, and terrorist war,” which disrupted enemy calculations.

The official was referring to the US- and Israeli-backed terrorist riots that had sought to divert economic protests towards unrest, but were faced with counteraction on the part of Iranian intelligence and security forces.

Over the past 47 years, he added – pointing to the time that has passed since the victory of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution – Iranians have proven that the country “is not something that can be swallowed,” warning that an “obstinate, reckless adversary who refuses to learn will ultimately be suffocated.”

Warning over retaliation and regional fallout

Mousavi said those who promoted the narrative of a “weak Iran” were now compelled either to retract their claims or “receive the regional slap of Iran’s power.”

Referring to past confrontations against foreign aggression, he said Iranians withstood eight years of war beginning in 1980 and, during the 12-day war imposed on the nation by Tel Aviv and Washington in June last year, “rendered a 20-year plan devised by the United States and the Zionist regime futile and defeated them.”

Mousavi described the most recent episode featuring the riots as a quasi-coup plot by an “Daesh-like American-Zionist axis,” saying the nation remained resolved to exact revenge.

“The slightest mistake will give us a free hand to act. The world will see a different face of a strong Iran; then no American will be safe, and the fire of the region will burn the United States and its allies.”

If war broke out, he said, the “women and men of the [regional] resistance” would remove the presence of outsiders from the region.

The commander said talk of a potential naval blockade of the country ignored basic geography and geopolitics, describing the Islamic Republic as a “powerful and vast” country that could not be besieged.

‘Revisited defense doctrine’

He said that following the 12-day war and continued American-Zionist actions, the country revised its defense doctrine, shifting to an offensive posture based on “a swift and sustained operational approach” and “asymmetric and crushing military strategies.”

Under this framework, Mousavi added, Iran’s actions would be “rapid, decisive, and outside US calculations.”

‘Iran’s intelligence command expanding’

Separately, the commander addressed a message to Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib, expressing confidence that Iran would further expand its intelligence command over the overt and covert activities of foreign espionage services, while continuing to strike terrorist groups and their hired agents.

Mousavi praised the “sincere” efforts invested by the ministry towards the purpose, saying the intelligence community’s coordination and professionalism had foiled complex enemy plots, including during the foreign-backed riots, leaving adversaries defeated, exposed, and humiliated.

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