IRGC commander vows any anti-Iran op to be contained by elite forces

Brigadier General Abbas Nilforooshan, the IRGC’s deputy chief for operations, made the remarks in an interview with Iran’s Arabic-language television news network Al-Alam TV on Monday evening, after the IRGC pounded positions of terrorists in Iraq’s Kurdistan region.

“We will target the counter-revolution [agents] wherever they create a stronghold, become the origin of operations against the Islamic Republic of Iran, and direct and lead terrorist movements,” Nilforooshan said.

He said Iran would never allow the emergence of any threat near its borders, adding that the recent artillery and drone attacks on Iraq’s Kurdistan region were carried out as part of the same strategic approach.
According to the general, those bases played the biggest role in the recent riots in Iran, which came after the death of a young Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, after she was taken into a police station.
Nilforooshan added that the IRGC attacks were a “legitimate defense” and that Iran had previously declared that it would respond to such threats decisively.

The IRGC’s Ground Force on Monday carried out artillery and drone attacks against terrorist bastions near the country’s western borders in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region and destroyed them.

The attacks came after the IRGC said units belonging to the Hamzeh Seyed al-Shohada base launched an operation to “destroy the positions of anti-Iran terrorist groups affiliated with global arrogance in northern Iraq who have in recent days trespassed on Iran’s northwestern borders and attacked some border bases of our country.”

Iran has on countless occasions warned Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region that it will not tolerate the presence and activity of terrorist groups along its northwestern borders, saying the country will give a decisive response should those areas become a hub of anti-Islamic Republic terrorists.

The IRGC commander pointed to global arrogance’s failed wars in West Asia and across the world over the past four decades and warned of the enemy’s plot to wage a hybrid war in the region which begins with a soft war.

The enemy plans to use cognitive and perceptual tools, including media, the internet and hundreds of satellite networks, in this new hybrid war against all the countries in the region, he said.

Nilforooshan said the IRGC has managed to make good progress in the field of naval drones which are only parts of the IRGC Navy’s advancement displayed in the past year.

He added that the IRGC seeks to improve its power every day, saying, “The creation of power means the development and increase of what we have in our hands and we are looking for access to modern products in accordance with new technologies.”

Referring to the recent riots across Iran, the IRGC commander said all those who played an effective role in igniting insecurity, inciting people and damaging people’s property have been identified.

The instigators of these riots, both outside and inside the country, would pay the price, Nilforooshan said, lauding people’s role in putting an end to the unrest.

Protests broke out in several Iranian cities over the September 16 death of Amini, the young Iranian woman who died at the hospital a few days after collapsing at a police station in the capital Tehran, where she and a group of others were receiving educational training on dress code rules.

Despite Iranian officials’ clarification on the circumstances surrounding Amini’s death, violent street protests have led to attacks on security officers and acts of vandalism against public property and sanctities.

Huge crowds of people on Sunday took to the streets in the Iranian capital Tehran to denounce acts of vandalism and desecration of Islamic sanctities by rioters over the past week.