NCRI – On November 3, on the anniversary of the occupation of the US embassy in Tehran, Hossein Salami, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ (IRGC) deputy commander in chief said: The mullah’s rule “today reaches to the North of the Red Sea in the Bab-el-Mandeb, is present in Yemen, and geographically extends to North Africa.” He also acknowledged that the regime’s “presence in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen… is to keep the danger away from our land.”
Salami, also referred to the role of the IRGC in the bombing of the American Marine barracks in Lebanon. “In 1983, the flames of Islamic revolution flared among Lebanese youth for the first time, and in a courageous act, a young Muslim buried 260 US Marines under the rebels east of Mediterranean Sea,” he said.
This commentary reflects that which was made by Mohsen Rafighdoost, former Minister of the IRGC, on July 20, 1987. “The US knows the explosives that mixed with ideology and sent up to 400 officers and Marines in the US Marine Barracks to hell; both the TNT and the ideology behind it came from Iran.”(State-run daily, Resalat – July 20,1987).
Salami, in another part of his speech and in order to cover up the crisis and the failures of the regime in the aftermaths of the nuclear deal, ridiculously threatened that if the US does not fulfil its commitments, “the centrifuges will be active again, but this will not be a return to the position we were in when we ceased our nuclear activities. We will advance and again the nuclear cycle will revive completely in this country.”
Salami also accused the U.S. of being the main source of human rights violations in the world and a cradle of terrorist groups. But he also acknowledged that the survival of the clerical regime is due to American wars in the region. “The Islamic revolution… benefits from developments that the U.S. pays for,” he said. “The US has offered big achievements to the Islamic Republic through its conquests in Afghanistan and Iraq and paying heavy prices for them.”
A day prior to Salami’s remarks, Ali Khamenei conceded that the “young generation is losing its confidence about the future and the revolution and is distancing itself from the path of the Imam (i.e. Khomeini).” He went on to say: “Compromising with the U.S. in no way solves the problems of the country. None of the economic problems, political problems, security problems, and moral problems will be solved. They will be exacerbated. There are a dozen reasons for this. More than a dozen reasons can be raised to this effect. The nuclear agreement is the last case.”
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
November 4, 2016