Iran Guard Commander Warns US: ‘Finger on the Trigger’
Dubai: The commander of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which played a key role in suppressing recent protests across the country in a crackdown that left thousands dead, said on Saturday that US warships are “readier than ever, fingers ready to press the trigger” as they head towards the Middle East.
Nournews, a news source close to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, reported on its Telegram channel that the commander, General Mohammad Pakpour, warned the United States and Israel to “avoid any miscalculations.”
“The Islamic Revolutionary Guard and beloved Iran are more ready than ever to carry out the orders and directives of the Commander-in-Chief, their fingers are ready to press the trigger,” Pakpour said, according to Nournews. he said.
Tensions between Iran and the United States remain high following the bloody crackdown on protests that began on December 28, triggered by the depreciation of Iran’s currency, the rial, that wreaked havoc on the country for nearly two weeks.
Trump’s warnings US President Donald Trump has repeatedly warned Tehran, setting two red lines on the use of military force: killing peaceful demonstrators and mass executions of people arrested at protests.
Trump has repeatedly said Iran has halted the execution of 800 people detained in protests. Iran’s attorney general, Mohammad Movahedi, vehemently denied the allegation in a comment to the judiciary’s Mizan news agency on Friday. He did not provide detailed information about the source of the claim.
On Thursday, Trump said aboard Air Force One that the United States was moving warships toward Iran “in case he wants to take action.”
“We have a huge fleet heading in that direction, and maybe we won’t have to use it,” Trump said.
The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and other warships traveling with it are in the Indian Ocean, a U.S. Navy official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military movements said Thursday.
Trump also mentioned that American officials had numerous discussions with Iran over its nuclear program before Israel launched a 12-day war against the Islamic Republic in June. In this war, US warplanes bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities. He threatened Iran with military action that would make previous US attacks on Iran’s uranium enrichment sites “look like peanuts.”
“They should have made a deal before we hit them,” Trump said.
Airline tensions Tensions have led to at least one European airline canceling some flights to the wider region; Air France announced that it has decided to temporarily suspend its service to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
The airline canceled two return flights from Paris to Dubai over the weekend, saying this was due to the current situation in the Middle East, without elaborating. It said it would resume service to Dubai later on Saturday.
“The airline closely follows the developments in the Middle East in real time and constantly monitors the geopolitical situation in the regions where its aircraft serve and fly in order to ensure the highest level of flight safety,” the company said.
Arrival information at Dubai’s international airport also showed that Dutch carriers KLM and Transavia’s flights from Amsterdam and Luxair’s flights from Luxembourg were canceled on Saturday. The airlines did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Some flights from KLM to Tel Aviv, Israel, were also canceled on Friday and Saturday, according to online flight trackers.
The death toll is rising. Although there have been no other demonstrations in Iran for days, the death toll reported by activists continued to rise as information leaked, despite the most comprehensive internet blackout in Iranian history that lasted more than two weeks.
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency announced the death toll as 5,137 on Saturday, and the number is expected to rise. It was stated that more than 27,700 people were arrested.
The group’s figures have been accurate in previous unrest and rely on a network of activists in Iran to verify deaths. This death toll exceeds that of other protests and unrest there in decades and is reminiscent of the chaos surrounding Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The Iranian government announced its first death toll on Wednesday, saying 3,117 people had died. Of these, 2,427 were identified as civilians and security forces, and the rest were labeled “terrorists”. In the past, the Iranian theocracy has undercounted or not reported deaths resulting from unrest.
