TEHRAN -- A senior Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) commander said on Wednesday that enemy naval forces have withdrawn more than 1,000 kilometers from Iran’s territorial waters, declaring that the Persian Gulf now marks the starting point of a new regional order and that the enemy’s calculations for Iran’s collapse are a “gross miscalculation.”

Brigadier General Yadollah Javani, deputy commander of the IRGC for Political Affairs, said that while dozens of foreign warships once roamed the Persian Gulf, Iran’s missile, drone, and naval capabilities have forced the enemy fleet to retreat beyond a thousand kilometers and “they do not dare approach”.

“The enemy thought that by bringing a massive volume of fire and targeting sensitive and strategic centers, it could bring Iran to its knees, but the resistance of the people and the armed forces changed their calculations,” Javani said, addressing a scientific conference on Persian Gulf developments at Islamic Azad University in Bandar Abbas.

Javani said recent developments demonstrate a shift in the regional balance of power. “Today, even some regional countries doubt the future of America’s presence in West Asia, and this shows that the region’s conditions have changed compared to the past,” he said.

He described the Persian Gulf as “a great divine blessing for the nations of the region, including the Iranian nation,” but said that for long years, “the major part of exploiting this capacity was in the hands of foreign powers”.

He noted that the Portuguese, the British, and in the contemporary era the United States sought to dominate the strategic region through military presence and multiple bases in Persian Gulf littoral states.

The commander said the enemy believed that “by assassinating leaders and commanders, the defense systems and the will of the system would collapse, but the cohesion of the people and the decisive and rapid responses of the armed forces showed that Islamic Iran rests on deep divine foundations and solid popular structures”.

Javani also pointed to admissions by current and former U.S. leaders regarding their failure to overthrow the Islamic Republic over nearly half a century, calling it “a clear document” that “the root of the confrontation lies in the fact that the Iranian nation prevented America from plundering the resources of the country and the region”.

He emphasized the importance of social cohesion, saying “all the country’s capacities must come to the field to preserve Iran and strengthen national authority, and every Iranian can play a role in defending the country, its security, and its independence”.

“The experience of the eight-year Sacred Defense showed that the Iranian nation, despite all the pressures and attacks of the enemies, did not allow even a span of the country’s soil to be separated, and this same spirit must be strengthened in the new generations,” Javani said.