TEHRAN – Iran’s armed forces will stage “powerful” complex and inclusive military drills enlisting the Army and the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), a senior commander announced Wednesday. 

Major General Gholam-Ali Rashid, commander of the Islamic Republic’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, made the announcement while attending a meeting of military top brass from the Iranian armed forces.

“The Islamic Republic’s armed forces will perform a set of powerful defensive and offensive maneuvers over the pending days and weeks,” he said.

According to Rashid, the Army and the IRGC consistently take part in joint drills, especially throughout the second half of the Persian calendar year, across the country’s various terrains, its airspace, and waters.

The maneuvers, the commander noted, deploy defensive and offensive military hardware, and would take place “towards confronting the enemies of the Iranian nation.”

Every year, approximately 30 extensive military maneuvers go underway, which are directed and navigated by the Headquarters that ensures their optimal implementation, the official stated.

“Since implementation of the maneuvers translate into testing the Armed Forces in the face of threats, and they go underway with the aim of ensuring the country’s defensive and offensive preparedness to crush the enemy, the drills are devised rigorously and resourcefully and performed in a serious manner as a means of taking the enemy off guard.”

Rashid said the Zionist regime committed a miscalculation about Iran, noting that the country’s powerful offensive operations against the regime, especially its Operation True Promise II, “simply displayed no more than a small fraction of the Armed Forces’ offensive capability.”

“The ballistic missiles that were fired [during the operation] struck military sites and pre-determined targets, proving to our commanders and the entire world that the occupied Palestinian

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