a senior Iranian general now says a) Iran will not attack anyone first, but b) will attack the American heartland itself in response if the Americans ever strike Iran militarily.
The threat was not, however, taken seriously; the fan-tastical word war going on within Iran in recent weeks has just been ignored in the United States, even by ultra-rightwingers.
The word war began in February when Brig. Gen. Moham-mad Hejazi, a Pasdar officer who is the Number Two man in the Iranian military as deputy commander of the Joint Staff, announced that Iran had abandoned its long-standing policy of retaliating harshly if attacked and was now prepared to launch a pre-emptive war if any country endangered Iran.
But the very next day, Iran’s ambassador to Russia, Mahmud-Reza Sajjadi, said there was no policy of pre-emptive war.
Oddly, the regime made no official announcement on what is a very fundamental and important issue. The competing statements by mid-level officials—an ambassador and a one-start general—were allowed to stand. Weeks went by before Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi made a vague statement that appeared to reject talk of a pre-emptive war.
Last Tuesday, the official spokesman for the military Brig. Gen. Masud Jazayeri spoke out. Jazayeri is noted more for provocative propaganda pronouncements that speaking on matters of substance, so his comments might not be viewed as the definitive word.
But the Iran daily quoted him as saying, “In the face of any attack, we will have a crushing response. In that case, we will not only act within the region of the Middle East and the Persian Gulf; no place in America will be safe from our attacks.”
It was the first time the Islamic Republic has threatened to strike at the United States itself in retaliation for an attack on Iran. Previously, Iran has always warned how the United States has dozens of bases in the region within range of Iran’s missiles that would be attacked. But it has never before suggested an attack on US territory.
It was also difficult to take the new threat seriously. An attack on the United States itself would without question result in total war by the United States against Iran to expunge the government of the Islamic Republic just as the attacks on Pearl harbor in 1941 and on the World Trade Center in 2001 resulted in wars that eliminated entire governments linked to those attacks.
Iran also reported that Jazayeri flatly said Iran would not strike any country first, thereby repudiating the pre-emptive war doctrine decreed by his fellow general, Hejazi.