Iran Can Thwart Any Threat at Any Place - Defense Minister

By Staff, Agencies

Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Amir Hatami said the Islamic Republic’s 1980-88 Sacred Defense against an invasion by a Western-backed Iraq has resulted in "valuable" achievements.

“Iran is in a position in the fields of science, politics, and particularly defense that despite the cruel threats by the hegemonic system, it can detect and thwart any threat at its starting point even outside the borders,” Hatami said in an online meeting in Tehran on Tuesday.

Iran is observing the Sacred Defense Week on the 40th anniversary of the start of Iraq’s imposed war on the Islamic Republic.

Relatively, Leader of the Islamic Revolution His Eminence Imam Sayyed Ali Khamenei addressed an event via video-link in Tehran on Monday, where he said Iran’s decisively victorious defense against foreign-backed forces of Iraq’s former dictator Saddam Hussein proved that invading the country is a “very costly” undertaking.

Successful engagement in the war, therefore, awarded the country its current level of security, Imam Khamenei noted, enumerating the rewards of the Sacred Defense.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Hatami said Washington’s assassination of top Iranian anti-terror commander Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani in Iraq early this year was aimed at preventing more US humiliation among its stooges in the region.

He added that Iran reserves the right to avenge General Soleimani’s assassination.

The defense minister emphasized that resistance will continue until the enemy is evicted from West Asia and the region is cleared of the elements of global arrogance.

US terrorists assassinated General Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps [IRGC], along with Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy head of Iraq’s Hashd al-Sha’abi, and their companions by targeting their vehicle outside the Baghdad International Airport on January 3.

The cowardly act of terror was carried out under the direction of US President Donald Trump, with the Pentagon taking responsibility for the strike.

General Soleimani is viewed by the world's freedom-seeking people as the key figure in defeating Daesh [the Arabic acronym for Takfiri ‘ISIS/ISIL’ group], the world’s most notorious terrorist group, in the Middle East battles.