Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS
A senior adviser to the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has said Tehran could deliberately prolong its war with the United States until President Donald Trump leaves office, using attrition to deter future attacks.
“One way is to prolong this war until we get to the next term of the presidency and cause attrition, so that if anyone else wants to attack Iran, they will know there is a cost,” Mohammad Reza Naqdi told PBS NewsHour on Tuesday.
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Naqdi, a senior adviser to the IRGC commander-in-chief, said Iran believes it is currently winning the war but has not yet achieved its final objective.
He said prolonging the conflict would allow Iran to gain more experience fighting the US and impose a cost that could serve as a deterrent against future attacks.
“We have to establish deterrence so that the enemy never dares to attack us. One way is to prolong the war and impose attrition, so that anyone who considers attacking Iran knows there will be a price to pay,” he said.
The remarks offer one of the clearest indications yet of how at least one senior Iranian military figure views the timeline of the conflict, explicitly linking the duration of the war to the end of Trump’s current presidency.
Asked whether Iran’s objective was to drag out the war until Trump is out of office, Naqdi said Tehran’s goal was to establish deterrence so that “the enemy never dares to attack us”.
He said Iran had learned from the conflict and had found the US military to be weaker than previously perceived.
Naqdi also issued a warning about Iran’s ability to continue fighting, saying the country was producing more missiles each day than it was launching. He claimed Iran could manufacture missiles in different locations and continue launching rockets even if the war lasted for years.
But he suggested Iran could pose an even broader threat if its missile stockpile were exhausted. “If there comes a day when Iran has no more missiles left, that’s when we will be even more dangerous for America,” Naqdi said.
Asked how Iran could become more dangerous without missiles, he replied: “Because America has thousands of economic interests throughout the world, and all of them can be easily destroyed.” The IRGC adviser did not specify what economic targets he was referring to or how Iran might attack them.
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SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA
