Image source, Iranian army/via getty images
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- Author, Writing
- Author’s title, BBC News World
After the United States attack against Iran nuclear facilities this Sunday, the world wonders what will be Tehran’s response.
The Iranian supreme leader, Ayatolá Ali Jamenei, has not made an official statement, but several senior military commanders have threatened to respond to US attacks.
On Monday, Iranian media published a video of the Commander in Chief of the Islamic Nation, Amir Hatami, talking with his officers in an operating room.
In the video, Hatami states that every time the US committed “crimes” against Iran in the past, “has received a decisive response, and this time it will be the same.”
Meanwhile, the Chief of the General Staff of the Iranian Army, Abdolrahim Mousavi, issued a statement in which he affirms that Washington opened the possibility that his forces take “any action” against US troops. And he adds that they will “never give in.”
And in another warning, the spokesman for the bodies of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard (CGRI), Ebrahim Zolfaghari, said Monday that the United States “entered directly” in the war and has violated the “sacred soil” of Iran.
He added that the first world power will face “serious, unfortunate and unpredictable consequences” through “powerful and selective operations.”
And in statements in English directly addressing Donald Trump, Zolfaghari said: “Mr. Trump, the bettor! You may begin this war, but we will be the ones who will finish it!”
Possible Iranian answers
Iran “is going to respond in some way. It is difficult to say what will be,” Lieutenant General Mark C. Schwartz, former United States security coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian authority told BBC.
In total, the US has military facilities in at least 19 locations in the Middle East, eight of them considered permanent by many regional analysts: Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar and Syria.
Iran has several allies in the region who could act in their name. Kata’ib Hezbollah, the Chiita Iraquí militia backed by Iran, would be the most viable to do so, followed by the hutis in Yemen, said the general holder.
The United States appointed Kata’ib Hezbollah, also known as the Hezbollah Brigades, as a foreign terrorist organization in 2009.
“Regime change”
Meanwhile in Washington, Trump spoke on Sunday about the possibility of a “regime change” in Iran.
Image source, EPA/EFE
The president wrote in his social network: “It is not politically correct to use the term ‘regime change’, but if the current Iranian regime is not able to make Iran Grande again, why shouldn’t there be a regime change ???”.
Trump’s statement, however, seems to contradict what other members of his administration have said.
During the weekend, the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, said that “the mission (to attack Iran) did not have or aimed a regime change”, and vice president JD Vance said that his country is not aimed at a new government in Tehran.
Elliott Abrams, who was sent from Washington to Iran during Trump’s first mandate, told the BBC that there has been a lot of confusion about the recent comments of the US president.
Abrams said that the president could have been “joking.”
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