US military in Gulf was ‘threat but now opportunity’ – Iran’s elite IRGC

Published time: 12 May, 2019 13:49

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FILE PHOTO © Reuters / Handout via third party

The presence of US military might in the Gulf region has shifted from a being threat and is now an “opportunity,” a senior official from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has said amid Washington’s latest round of saber-rattling.

Amirali Hajiadeh, who heads the elite unit’s aerospace division, made the comments on Sunday while discussing the presence of US military garrisons and naval fleets based in countries neighboring Iran.

“An aircraft carrier that has at least 40 to 50 planes on it and 6000 forces gathered within it was a serious threat for us in the past,” he told the Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA).

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“But now, the threats have switched to opportunities,” he added. Hajiadeh also noted the growth in Iran’s missile capabilities, which could easily target US aircraft carriers floating between 300 and 700 kilometers away.

If [the Americans] make a move we will hit them in the head.

The commander’s remarks come a week after the Pentagon sent the USS ‘Abraham Lincoln’ Carrier Strike Group and bomber aircraft to the Gulf, in what US National Security Advisor (NSA) John Bolton called an “unmistakable message” to the Iranian government.This was later bulked up with the deployment of another battery of its Patriot missile system to the region.

However, Iranian clerics, as well as government and military officials, have hit back at the growth in the US military threat. On Sunday, the head of the Revolutionary Guards dismissed the US build-up as part of a “psychological war”against Iran.

While on Friday, Ayatollah Yousef Tabatabai-Nejad warned Washington that a single missile from Iran could easily sink its “billion-dollar fleet.”