Commander downplays US threats against Iran

A senior Iranian Army commander downplayed the recent nuclear threat by the United States against Iran, saying Washington’s threat is “theoretical”, rather than practical, in nature.

“These threats are posed in theory and are rather attractive to the media,” Commander of the Iranian Army Ground Force Brigadier General Ahmad Reza Pourdastan stressed in remarks on Saturday.

“When the US forces arrived in the region they felt that they can establish superiority over the region, but they realized after a while that military approach and reliance on advanced weapons is not the proper means to accomplish their mission,” Pourdastan added.

He noted that the US and trans-regional forces in Afghanistan and Iraq have already been bogged down in a deep quagmire that they can’t escape.

Pourdastan stated that the US move to increase the number of US forces in Afghanistan by 30,000 is another indication of its inability.

The remarks by the Iranian commander came after the US President Barack Obama, in an interview with The New York Times, threatened Iran and North Korean with nuclear weapons.

The US administration released its policy document known as “Nuclear Posture Review” last week, in which the administration called a manifesto “achieving substantial further nuclear force reductions”.

Although it explicitly states that all non-nuclear weapons states are immune from nuclear attack, the statement reserves the use of nuclear weapons against countries like Iran and North Korea, labeled as “outliers” in the paper.

Washington and its Western allies accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear program, while they have never presented any corroborative evidence to substantiate their allegations. Iran denies the charges and insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.

Tehran stresses that the country has always pursued a civilian path to provide power to the growing number of Iranian population, whose fossil fuel would eventually run dry.

Iran is under three rounds of UN Security Council sanctions for turning down West’s calls to give up its right of uranium enrichment, saying the demand is politically tainted and illogical.

Iran has so far ruled out halting or limiting its nuclear work in exchange for trade and other incentives, saying that renouncing its rights under the NPT would encourage world powers to put further pressure on the country and would not lead to a change in the West’s hardline stance on Tehran.