‘IF TRUMP STARTS WAR, WE WILL FINISH IT’

TOP IRAN GENERAL SOLEIMANI SOUNDS WARNING AGAINST US

ANKARA: A powerful commander of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards has said that Donald Trump should address any threats against Tehran directly to him, and mocked the US president as using the language of “night clubs and gambling halls”.

The comments by Maj Gen Qassem Soleimani, who heads the Quds Force of the Guards, were the latest salvo in a war of words between the two countries.

“As a soldier, it is my duty to respond to your threats ... If you wants to use the language of threat ... talk to me, not to the president (Hassan Rouhani). It is not in our president’s dignity to respond to you,” Soleimani was quoted as saying by Iran’s semiofficial Tasnim news agency.

Soleimani’s message on Thursday was in essence a warning to the US to stop threatening Iran with war or risk exposing itself to an Iranian response.

“We are near you, where you can’t even imagine ...Come. We are ready ... If you begin the war, we will end the war,” Tasnim quoted Soleimani as saying. “You know that this war will destroy all that you possess.”

Israel’s energy minister Yuval Steinitz said the fiery rhetoric of Soleimani was only “empty talk” because Iran was aware of “the strength and might of the US military”. Trump had tweeted: “Never, ever threaten the United States again or you will suffer consequences the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before. We are no longer a country that will stand for your demented words of violence & death. Be cautious!”