Commander Calls on US to Avoid "Wrong Move" against Iran

Deputy Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Brigadier General Massoud Jazayeri on Tuesday said all US forces in the region are within Iran’s range and “in case the Americans make a mistake, the region will become hell for them”.

General Jazayeri’s remarks came in reaction to US President Barack Obama’s latest threatening rhetoric against Iran.

In an interview with Bloomberg news network on Sunday, the US president said he believes that when US officials threaten Iran by saying, “all options are on the table,” the Iranians “take it seriously.”

Obama also referred to the presence of US troops in the region, saying “We have a high degree of confidence that when they (Iranians) look at 35,000 US military personnel in the region that are engaged in constant training exercises under the direction of a president who already has shown himself willing to take military action in the past, that they should take my statements seriously,” he said.

In reply, General Jazayeri underlined that the rhetoric of military option being on the table has turned into a laughing matter for the Iranian people.

He also played down Obama’s remarks about the number and effectiveness of US forces in the region, saying that such observations are distant from reality and can be considered as “joke of the year”.

In recent weeks, senior American officials, including Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, have time and again repeated the idea of military option still being on the table.

Iran’s high-ranking officials have slammed the tone and described threatening the Iranian nation with the military option as a grave mistake.

Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan on February 18 said the country’s response to any aggression would be so crushing that the enemy would regret it.

Earlier, Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari stressed that if Iran comes under attack, it will threaten the enemy from within.