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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — The newly appointed commander of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) visited Iran’s parliament on Sunday morning to brief lawmakers about the latest US aggressive postures in the region.
“The commander of Guards said that the American war against Iran is not possible,” MP Mohammad Ali Pourmokhtar, who attended the meeting on Sunday told Fars news agency, an outlet affiliated with the IRGC. “America has no power or the courage to initiate a war against Iran.”
Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami, a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war, took over command of the 120,000-strong guards in April at a time when the group and the Iranian economy were coming under paralyzing pressure from the administration of US President Donald Trump.
Washington announced on Monday that it was sending the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group to the Middle East because of “a credible threat by Iranian regime forces.”
“Deploying an aircraft carrier to the regional waters by America is nothing more than a psychological warfare. By doing this, America intends to scare the people and some [Iranian] military officials from war,” Pourmokhtar told Farsnews. “America will hesitate from taking such a risk [of initiating a war] because of Iran’s defensive prowess and the vulnerability of the aircraft carriers.”
Then on Friday, the Pentagon announced more warships were being sent like the USS Arlington that allows Marines, amphibious vehicles, landing craft, and rotary aircraft to be deployed.
Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani told the body’s official news website that Commander Salami attended a session of the parliament at 9 a.m. for the MPs to become familiar with his views about strengthening the IRGC standing in the country and using the wide network of paramilitary Basij [IRGC recruiting pool] to improve conditions inside the country.
Salami’s closed-door visit to parliament comes one day after President Hassan Rouhani said Iranians should be united in the face of enemies’ political and economic pressure, which he described as an “all-out war, unprecedented in the history of the Islamic Revolution.”
Update: 3:42 p.m.
Salami’s closed-door visit to parliament comes one day after President Hassan Rouhani said Iranians should be united in the face of enemies’ political and economic pressure, which he described as an “all-out war, unprecedented in the history of the Islamic Revolution.”
“Today we cannot say whether the conditions are better or worse than during the Imposed war,” Rouhani told a group of political activists on Saturday morning, referring to the devastating 1980s war with Iraq. “But during the war, we had no problems with banking, marketing oil, imports and exports and the only sanction we faced was purchasing arms.”
The hard-line IRGC is jockeying for influence inside the country with Rouhani’s government as the dire economic situation is taking its toll on the ordinary Iranians. Rouhani’s oil minister lashed out at a top conservative politician on Saturday who had urged the oil ministry to implement “war posturing” as the US sanctions bite.
“For a year, not only has the Ministry of Oil taken a war-like posture, but it is involved in a hostile war with a merciless and irrational aggressor,” Oil Minister Zangeneh was quoted as saying by the ministry’s main news outlet Shana. Zangeneh also criticized the internal opponents of Rouhani’s government for making his job more difficult.
Since pulling out of the 2015 nuclear deal last year, the US government has re-imposed aggressive sanctions against the energy, banking, shipping and steel sectors. This week, Iran responded by scaling back on its commitment under the nuclear deal and giving a 60-day ultimatum to the European Union and other remaining members “to deliver on their commitment in particular in oil and banking sectors.”
“America does not want war,” one of the MPs who complained about the high prices of goods told Salami on Sunday, according to IRGC-affiliated Tasnimnews. “The war is already inside Iran; we need to find a solution for the inflation.”
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