TEHRAN — Iran’s Islamic
Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) staged a major military exercise across the country’s south on Monday amid threats by the occupying regime of Israel and its supporters.
The IRGC’s aerospace division, ground troops and naval forces joined in the five-day drill, with maritime forces set to maneuver in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the narrow gateway for 20% of the world’s traded oil.
Brigadier General Abbas Nilforoushan, the IRGC’s deputy chief of operations and spokesman for the Great Prophet 17 joint drills, said the drills involve various IRGC units, such as the aerospace force and the cyber-electronic division, and covers the coastlines of the Hormozgan, Bushehr, and Khuzestan povinces.
“The military exercise is meant to increase the preparedness of the IRGC combat units. It simulates one of the most sophisticated offensive plans used in hybrid warfare and replicates synchronicity and coherence in soft, semi-hard, and hard areas of combat,” he said.
Gen. Gholamali Rashid, a top IRGC commander, vowed a harsh response to any Israeli military action against Iran.
The drill comes days after the latest round of talks in Vienna to restore Iran’s nuclear deal with world countries and remove the most draconian sanctions ever on the Islamic Republic.
Nournews, a media outlet close to Iran’s top security body, reported last week that security forces assess there may be a credible possibility the occupying regime of Israel would launch an attack in an effort to thwart the talks in Vienna.
On Monday, commander of the IRGC’s Khatam al-Anbiya military base General Gholamali Rashid said, “Any threat to Iran’s nuclear and military bases by the Zionist regime is not possible without the green light support of the United States.”
“If such threats are implemented, the Islamic Republic’s armed forces will mount crushing attacks against all centers, bases, paths, and spaces used to enable the violation, and against the origins of the violation, based on its trained operational plans,” he said.
The New York Times, citing several current and former Israeli military officials and experts, reported on Saturday that the Tel Aviv regime lacks the ability to act on its threats of launching an attack against nuclear sites in Iran.
“It is very possible that when the Israeli planes try to land back in Israel, they will find that the Iranian missiles destroyed their runways,” said Tal Inbar, an aviation expert and former head of the Fisher Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies, an aviation-focused research group.
One current Israeli security official said Israel did not currently have the ability to carry out an attack and even with improvements, Israeli airstrikes would not end Iran’s nuclear program.
“They would likely, however, set the region on fire,” the New York Times said.