"The Army will cut the hands of any aggressor before rising"

Army Commander Warns of Iran's Preemptive Measures against Enemy Aggression
News number: 8911161182 15:13 | 2011-02-05
http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8911161182

TEHRAN (FNA)- Commander of the Iranian Army Major General Ataollah Salehi
underscored on Saturday that the country's Armed Forces are prepared to
carry out preemptive measures to strangle any aggressive action by the
enemies.

"The Army will not linger one moment in guarding the territorial integrity
(of the country), honoring the valuable achievements of the Revolution and
safeguarding the water, air and land borders," Salehi said in a message on
the occasion of the Air Force Day in Iran.

"The Army will cut the hands of any aggressor before rising," he stressed.

Iranian military commanders and officials have on many occasions warned
enemies of Iran's crushing response to any possible action against the
country, stressing that the Iranian Armed Forces will give a crippling
response to aggressors if they dare to attack the country.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran's Armed Forces, in particular the Ground
Forces, are fully prepared and should a threat emerge, these forces will
defend Iran's sovereignty powerfully … and will cripple the enemy,"
Commander of the Iranian Army Ground Force Brigadier General Ahmad Reza
Pourdastan said on Wednesday.

He said that the main strategy of the Armed Forces is to get highly prepared
according to various forms of threats.

Israel and its close ally the United States have repeatedly warned of a
military strike on Iran.

Both Washington and Tel Aviv possess advanced weapons of mass destruction,
including nuclear warheads, but they accuse Iran of seeking a nuclear
weapon, while they have never presented any corroborative document to
substantiate their allegations.

Iran vehemently denies the charges, insisting that its nuclear program is
for peaceful purposes only.

Speculations that Israel could bomb Iran mounted since a big Israeli air
drill two years ago. In the first week of June, 2008, 100 Israeli F-16 and
F-15 fighters reportedly took part in an exercise over the eastern
Mediterranean and Greece, which was interpreted as a dress rehearsal for a
possible attack on Iran's nuclear installations.

Iran has, in return, warned that it would target Israel and the US as well
as their worldwide interests in case it comes under attack by either
country.

Iran has also warned it could close the strategic Strait of Hormoz if it
became the target of a military attack over its nuclear program.

Strait of Hormoz, the entrance to the strategic Persian Gulf waterway, is a
major oil shipping route.

Meantime, a recent study by the Institute for Science and International
Security (ISIS), a prestigious American think tank, has found that a
military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities "is unlikely" to delay the
country's program.

The ISIS study also cautioned that an attack against Iran would backfire by
compelling the country to acquire nuclear weaponry.

A recent study by a fellow at Harvard's Olin Institute for Strategic
Studies, Caitlin Talmadge, warned that Iran could use mines as well as
missiles to block the strait, and that "it could take many weeks, even
months, to restore the full flow of commerce, and more time still for the
oil markets to be convinced that stability had returned."