Iran official: Attack by US could spark war
TEHRAN, Iran – An adviser to Iran’s supreme leader who is a possible 2021 presidential candidate is warning that any American attack on the Islamic Republic could set off a “full-fledged war” in the Mideast in the waning days of the Trump administration.
Speaking to The Associated Press, Hossein Dehghan struck a hard-line tone familiar to those in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, a force he long served in before becoming a defense minister under President Hassan Rouhani.
A soldier has yet to serve as Iran’s top civilian leader since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, in part over the initial suspicion that its conventional military forces remained loyal to the toppled shah. But hard-liners in recent years have openly suggested Iran move toward a military dictatorship given its economic problems and threats from abroad, particularly after President Donald Trump pulled America out of Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal.
“We don’t welcome a crisis. We don’t welcome war. We are not after starting a war,” Dehghan said Wednesday. “But we are not after negotiations for the sake of negotiations either.”
Dehghan, 63, described himself as a “nationalist” with “no conventional political tendency” during an interview in downtown Tehran. He’s one of many likely to register to run in the June 18 election as Rouhani is term-limited from running again. Others likely include a young technocrat with ties to Iranian intelligence and former hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Dehghan, who has been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury since November 2019, warned against any American military escalation in Trump’s final weeks in office.
“A limited, tactical conflict can turn into a full-fledged war,” he said. “Definitely, the United States, the region and the world cannot stand such a comprehensive crisis.”
President-elect Joe Biden has said he’s willing to return to the nuclear deal, which saw sanctions on Iran lifted in exchange for Tehran limiting its uranium enrichment, if Iran first complies with its limits. Since Trump’s withdrawal, Iran has gone beyond all the deal’s restrictions while still allowing United Nations nuclear inspectors to work in the country. Dehghan said those U.N. checks should continue so long as an inspector is not a “spy.”
A Dehghan presidency likely would be looked upon with suspicion in Washington and Paris. As a young commander in the Guard, Dehghan oversaw its operations in Lebanon and Syria between 1982 and 1984, according to an official biography given to Iran’s parliament in 2013. Israel, Iran’s archenemy in the Mideast, had just invaded Lebanon amid that country’s civil war.