TEHRAN (AFP) – Iran's top general warned on Thursday that if arch-foe the United States attacks the Islamic republic none of the American soldiers in the region will return home alive, the Fars news agency reported.
Armed forces chief of staff General Hassan Firouzabadi's comments come a day after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama of a tough response as he lashed out against Washington's new nuclear policy.
"If the U.S. takes action against Iran, then the threats against it will become a thousand times more, its economic problems will increase and it will lose more markets," the agency quoted Firouzabadi as saying.
"And none of the U.S. soldiers in the region will go back to America alive."
The general also called Obama a compassionate man, but said he was unable to act.
"He is a black from an underprivileged social stratum with an east Asian background and has compassion towards humanity in his heart, but he is stranded in the terrifying U.S. apparatus and is not able to do anything," he charged.
Ahmadinejad on Wednesday warned Obama after the United States announced a nuclear weapons policy shift.
"Be careful. If you set step in Mr (George W.) Bush's path, the nations' response would be the same tooth-breaking one as they gave Bush," he said.
On Tuesday Washington unveiled new limits on the U.S. nuclear arsenal, saying it would only use atomic weapons in "extreme circumstances" and would not attack non-nuclear states.
It said for the first time that countries without atomic weapons that complied with non-proliferation treaty obligations need not fear a U.S. nuclear attack.
But Obama also warned that exceptions could be made for "outliers" such as Iran and North Korea, both of which are accused by the West of flouting UN resolutions.
