Shayan Ghajar

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen’s comments on NBC August 1 have already elicited a response from Iran’s military command. Admiral Mullen revealed that the United States has a plan ready to strategically attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, should the need arise. Though he emphasized that the United States has no current intention of doing so, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs also framed the situation as a decision between accepting an Iran with nuclear weapons, or the necessity of a military attack on Iran.

Chief of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps Political Bureau, Brigadier General Yadollah Javani, responded to Mullen’s interview with bravado and threats, widely reported on all state-owned and affiliated Iranian news agencies. Brig. Gen. Javani stressed the potentially massive backlash resulting from an American or Israeli strike, saying: “The Persian Gulf is a strategic region. If its security is in danger, this will jeopardize [America’s] interests too, and our response would be decisive.” General Javani continued, saying, “the Persian Gulf will be safe either for all, or for none.”

The rest of the IRGC official’s statement consisted of rhetoric devaluing the potential threat posed by the United States and Israel, saying the two nations lacked the courage to attack Iran and use the threat as merely a tool to exert pressure on Iran to comply with the West’s nuclear demands. Javani reiterated that if Iran were attacked, its response would be “crushing.”

PressTV, Iran’s official English-language news agency, made mention in its coverage of Javani’s statement of an alleged Israeli military drill simulating an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites, supposedly ongoing at present. Iranian state media has shown increased coverage of possible Israeli strikes in the past few weeks, demonstrating concern in Iran’s upper echelons over the potential fallout.

Significantly, many of the articles reporting Javani’s comments in the state-owned news agencies also made mention of Iran’s potential targets in the event of an Israeli or American attack.

Fars News, a semi-official news agency with intimate ties to the IRGC, closed its coverage of Brig. Gen. Javani’s statements by pointing out that “Iran has also warned that in case of an attack by either the U.S. or Israel, it will target 32 American bases in the Middle East and close the strategic Strait of Hormoz. An estimated 40 percent of the world’s oil supply passes through the waterway.”

This statement echoes one made last week by a deputy representative of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini attached to Iran’s military, who promised that “if [Iran’s] enemies make the slightest move against the Islamic Republic, we will make the Strait of Hormoz and the Persian Gulf very unsafe for them.”