A top commander in the Quds Force once led by Qasem Soleimani has vowed that Iran will strike at U.S. forces in the Middle East “without any concern” about it killing their British allies, who will be viewed as “collateral damage”.
“Our forces will retaliate and target U.S. troops in Middle East without any concern about killing its allies, including UK troops, as this has turned into a fully fledged war with much collateral damage expected,” said the commander, who was reportedly close to Soleimani before he was eliminated in a drone strike, in comments to The Times.
“We are very clear and have identified our targets and will fight with Americans. We request UK, the key U.S. ally, and other Western allies, including the NATO alliance, to not stand with this Trump regime, to avoid wider collateral damage in Iran’s response as it conducts foreign military operations against U.S. after Soleimani’s assassination,” he added.
The Quds Force is responsible for the operations of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) abroad, in countries such as Iraq, Syria, and even Venezuela, and has along with the rest of the IRGC been designating a terrorist organisation by the Trump administration.
The threat comes as Admiral the Lord West of Spithead, former First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff, warned that Iran will indeed “assume that Britain would be party to any all-out attack by the U.S.” and that Britons may well now be more at risk than even the Americans themseves.
This is because the British will likely be viewed as “a softer target” by the Iranians, the retired senior officer explained in comments to the Telegraph.
The newspaper listed a number of ways the Islamic Republic could strike at the United Kingdom, noting that radical Islamic terrorists linked to the Iran-backed Hezbollah organisation were caught stockpiling “tonnes” of explosives on the outskirts of London in 2015, and that Iranians were blamed for cyber-attacks on parliamentarians in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords in 2017.
Iran already demonstrated its willingness to seize British-flagged shipping in the Strait of Hormuz in defiance of the Royal Navy in 2019 in the Strait of Hormuz, and it has even kidnapped British military personnel on operations in previous years.
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