Leader’s advisor: Any foreign forces attempting to land in Iran ‘will certainly be destroyed’
A senior military advisor to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Mojtaba Khamenei has warned that any foreign forces attempting to land on Iranian territory as part of a potential invasion “will be destroyed,” pointing to the country’s immense pool of trained personnel capable of defending the nation through asymmetric warfare.
“In the missile, air-defense, and territorial-defense sectors, we have reached a level where, God forbid, if they intend to land anywhere in Iran, they will certainly be destroyed,” Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi said during a televised broadcast on Tuesday.
“We have at least 10 million trained Basij personnel, who can defend all parts of the country through a distributed, mosaic-style approach and asymmetric warfare,” he said.
“People are the main pillar of the Islamic Republic’s power and national security.”
‘Comprehensive surveillance of foreign forces’
Safavi, a former chief commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), also hailed Iran’s “significant advances” in the areas of missile, drone, and air-defense capabilities, while pointing to its comprehensive monitoring of foreign military activity in the region.
“In the maritime domain, whether in the skies over the Persian Gulf or even in the Indian Ocean, we detect with our radar systems the US naval vessels currently in the region…and determine where they are located,” he said.
He said Iran could mount both defensive and retaliatory operations, describing the country’s performance in the face of any warfare as a show of effective societal resilience and strategic determination.
“What matters is whether their social resilience in the United States is greater than Iran’s. Iran’s is certainly greater. War is a battle of wills,” Safavi said.
“Iran knows its objectives and wants to defend itself, its national interests, and its dignity.”
The advisor also addressed the Strait of Hormuz, saying its reopening would depend, among other things, on the lifting of the United States’ illegal naval blockade.
“The Strait of Hormuz will not be reopened through US military pressure. It is Iran and Oman that can establish the mechanism for this. We are in contact with the Omanis, although public reporting indicates that the United States is preventing this,” he said.
“The reopening of the Strait of Hormuz is conditional on [the US’s] accepting Iran’s terms.”
Regional security
Safavi said Iran’s broader objective was to establish a Persian Gulf security framework with regional states in the absence of interference by the United States.
“Our objective is to permanently remove the threat to the Iranian people and, together with the countries of the region, establish lasting security and sustainable development in the Persian Gulf without the presence of the United States,” he said.
He also underlined that Iran had no intention of either territorial expansion or regime change in Arab countries and proposed joint regional security arrangements that would also prevent acts of aggression against regional states by the Israeli regime.