TEHRAN — The General Staff of Iran’s Armed Forces and the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, the Islamic Republic’s highest operational command unit, warned Tuesday that the country would deliver “even harsher, crushing, and unpredictable blows” to aggressors, responding to the U.S. president’s most recent threats.
In a joint statement, the military bodies pledged that a response of such magnitude awaits aggressors as well as the rulers of the United States and the Israeli regime, citing the record of the Islamic Republic’s decisive and successful confrontation in the face of previous wars imposed on the nation, including the last two rounds of unprovoked American-Israeli aggression.
Earlier in the day, Donald Trump had used his address to the UN General Assembly’s 81st annual meeting to claim he was poised to make a “big decision” on whether to make a deal or “quickly annihilate” Iran.
According to the statement issued by the Iranian military bodies, Trump’s remarks failed to reflect battlefield realities and demonstrated “America’s strategic deadlock” in its confrontation against Iran.
The repetition of “baseless allegations and threats” should not be interpreted as a sign of U.S. strength, the statement noted. It reminded that the mismatch between the threats and the actual erosion of U.S. military capabilities reflects “strategic desperation” rather than power.
“The rhetoric of the U.S. president will not alter the balance of power calculations and will never compensate for this country’s diminished position in the emerging global order or America’s humiliating defeats in the war against Iran and the Resistance Front,” it said.
The bodies, meanwhile, noted that U.S. efforts at trying to portray Iran in a bad light came while the Islamic Republic has consistently served as “an anchor of security in the region.” They additionally cited the U.S.’s most recent sanctions
against the Islamic Republic, interpreting the coercive measures as an attempt at “holding the global economy hostage,” and reminding that Washington resorted to the measures after failing to force the country into submission militarily.
Separately, Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi, a senior military advisor to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Mojtaba Khamenei, warned that any foreign forces attempting to land on Iranian territory as part of a potential invasion “will be destroyed,” pointing to the country’s immense pool of trained personnel capable of defending the nation through asymmetric warfare.
“In the missile, air-defense, and territorial-defense sectors, we have reached a level where, God forbid, if they intend to land anywhere in Iran, they will certainly be destroyed,” Safavi said during a televised broadcast.
“We have at least 10 million trained Basij personnel, who can defend all parts of the country through a distributed, mosaic-style approach and asymmetric warfare,” he said. “People are the main pillar of the Islamic Republic’s power and national security.”
Safavi, a former chief commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, also hailed Iran’s “significant advances” in missile, drone, and air-defense capabilities, while pointing to comprehensive monitoring of foreign military activity in the region.
“In the maritime domain, whether in the skies over the Persian Gulf or even in the Indian Ocean, we detect with our radar systems the US naval vessels currently in the region and determine where they are located,” he said.
He said Iran can mount both defensive and retaliatory operations, describing the country’s performance in the face of any warfare as a show of effective societal resilience and strategic determination.
“What matters is whether their social resilience in the United States is greater than Iran’s. Iran’s is certainly greater. War is a battle of wills,” Safavi said. “Iran knows its objectives and wants to defend itself, its national interests, and its dignity.”
The advisor also addressed the Strait of Hormuz, saying its reopening will depend, among other things, on the lifting of the U.S.’s illegal naval blockade.
“The Strait of Hormuz will not be reopened through U.S. military pressure. It is Iran and Oman that can establish the mechanism for this. We are in contact with the Omanis, although public reporting indicates that the United States is preventing this,” he said.
“The reopening of the Strait of Hormuz is conditional on the U.S. accepting Iran’s terms.”