Iran

Commander: Iran’s Redlines in Fighting Terrorism Lie outside Geographical Borders

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The Iranian Armed Forces are ready to repel the threats posed by the terrorist groups outside the country’s geographical borders, Ground Force Commander Lieutenant General Ahmad Reza Pourdastan stressed on Monday.
“Today, we are faced with a new method of threats which is different from the past and one of these threats is the activities of the Takfiri grouplets in Iraq, Syria and around Iran,” Pourdastan said in an interview with Iran-based Arabic-language Al-Alam news channel on Monday.

“We have created the necessary capacity in ourselves to confront these threats and monitor all moves of these grouplets,” he added.

“We have specified some redlines which are far from the Iranian borders so that if terrorist and Takfiri groups approach them, we will hit them a heavy blow,” Pourdastan warned.

He also said that Tehran is cooperating with Baghdad in training the Iraqi forces for fighting different threats.

In relevant remarks on Friday, Pourdastan assured the nation that the country’s Armed Forces were ready to give crushing response to the terrorist groups which dare to attack Iran.

“As a soldier, I assure the brave Iranian nation that the Armed Forces are at the service of the people with full preparedness and people shouldn’t be concerned,” Pourdastan told FNA in Rey city near Tehran.

Asked about Iran’s reaction to any possible aggression of the terrorist groups, including the ISIL, against the country, he said, “All moves of these grouplets are monitored and we have very good capacities for confronting them and if they move to approach us, they should rest assured that we will target them on the soil of the same neighboring country (that is used as their platform) and will not allow them to approach our borders at all.”

Also this month, Iran’s Chief of Staff Major General Hassan Firouzabadi described the ISIL as a Frankenstein monster created through a media hype by the Zionists in a psychological operation to frighten the Muslim states and advance their goals, stressing that Iraq alone will be enough to annihilate the terrorist group.

“The ISIL is a dreadful creature which has been created through the psychological operations and hues and cries of the Zionist media,” Firouzabadi told reporters on the sidelines of military parades at the mausoleum of the Founder of the Islamic Republic, the Late Imam Khomeini, South of Tehran.

He said the ISIL was a monster just in the media, and not in reality, stressing that the Iraqi army and people enjoyed the needed power and capability to confront and annihilate the ISIL by themselves.

“There is no need for any (foreign) military forces’ deployment in Iraq and you saw that the Iraqi people and army accompanied by religious leaders managed to make them withdraw.”

Asked if Iran has any independent plans to fight the ISIL, Firouzabadi said, “There is no need for the deployment of Iranian soldiers to fight the ISIL. ”

He reminded the common borders of Iran and Iraq, and said Tehran is providing Baghdad with military consultations under the defense pacts that the two neighboring states have.

Firouzabadi had also earlier warned the US and its allies to avoid exercising new plots in the region, saying that fighting and bombing the positions of the ISIL terrorist group cannot be a pretext for violating the sovereignty of Syria and Iraq.

“Military experts know that aerial bombardment is not the solution in the fight against terrorism and it can only be one in the chain of the military actions needed for a comprehensive fight against terrorism,” Firouzabadi said, implying the United States’ theatrical moves against terrorism.

He said the experience gained in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq in the last few months showed that effective fight against terrorism should include a simultaneous use of a wide range of tactics and methods, and said, “The experienced Syrian army forces and the country’s popular forces as well as the Iraqi army and popular forces should have the main role in this campaign.”

“Bombing the ISIL terrorists can no way be a permission for violating the sovereignty of the Syrian and Iraqi states,” Firouzabadi added.

He stressed the necessity for the regional countries’ vigilance against the US plots, and expressed the hope that “those Muslim regional states that helped to the creation of the ISIL at the beginning of this game would relinquish this plot”.

The United States declared the start of a coalition against the ISIL during a NATO summit in the Welsh city of Newport on 4-5 September. The US call was responded by several western and Arab states, but the policy was questioned by many regional officials and political leaders.

After the so-called US-led coalition against the ISIL declared its creation, Iran lashed out at the western states for pursuing a double-standard policy towards campaign against terrorism in various countries.

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