The commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps warned America would receive a “strong slap in the face” if it did “anything stupid” against the Shiite nation.
“The enemy should not be mistaken in its assessments, and it will receive a strong slap in the face if it does make such a mistake,” said General Mohammad Pakpour, as quoted by Reuters. The “enemy” he referred to was the United States and its allies.
Pakpour added that Iran’s military exercises were meant to warn the “arrogant” Western world “not to do anything stupid.”
“Everyone could see today what power we have on the ground,” he boasted.
Iranian media played up the launch of “smart and advanced” rockets during the maneuvers. General Pakpour popped up in these reports to declare that Iran successfully tested rockets with ranges of over 100 kilometers. “We are ready to give a crushing response to any threat,” he declared.
Thus far, there seems to be little confirmation that these “advanced” rockets covered the advertised distances and hit their targets, beyond the claims published by Iranian media.
However, Reuters cites analysts who believe Iran’s missiles are accurate enough to cause big problems for Israel if launched by Iran’s terrorist proxies in Hezbollah:
As tensions also mounted with Israel, a military analyst at Tasnim said that Iran-allied Hezbollah could use Iranian made Fateh 110 missiles to attack the Israeli nuclear reactor at Dimona from inside Lebanon.
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said last Thursday that his group, which played a major role in ending Israel’s occupation of Lebanon, could strike Dimona.
“Since Lebanon’s Hezbollah is one of the chief holders of the Fateh 110, this missile is one of main alternatives for targeting the Dimona installations,” Hossein Dalirian said in a commentary carried by Tasnim.
The Jerusalem Post notes that Nasrallah made similar threats against the ammonia storage facility at Haifa last year. His new threats were prompted by the 2016 U.S. presidential election. “Trump’s election does not scare us, even if claims that he will give Netanyahu the green light to wage a war on Lebanon turn out to be true,” he said.
“After what came out after the meeting between Netanyahu and Trump, I am not exaggerating if I say that yesterday there was a semi-official announcement of the death of the path of negotiations,” he added, referring to the long-running negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.