Americans are too scared to face us on the battlefield, says military chief
Iran has responded to Washington’s list of demands to avoid crippling sanctions by daring the United States to attack it militarily.
Senior regime officials simultaneously played down the importance of a speech by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in which he insisted that Iran change its Middle East policies, and issued retaliatory threats.
‘‘This enemy does not have the courage for military confrontation and face-toface war with Iran, but it is trying to put economic and mental pressures on the Iranian nation,’’ Majorgeneral Mohammad Bagheri, the head of the Iranian military, was quoted by state media as saying.
In excerpts of a speech posted on his official website yesterday, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, said the US had done everything it could to bring about regime change in Tehran, but it would be defeated.
‘‘The current US president will meet the same fate as his predecessors, Bush and the neoconservatives and Reagan, and will vanish from history,’’ he said.
Pompeo fleshed out details of US President Donald Trump’s new Iran policy this week, after Trump’s decision two weeks ago to pull out of the deal.
Pompeo said the president was determined to impose the ‘‘strongest sanctions in history’’ to curb Iran’s nuclear programme. On the other hand, he said the US would begin trading with Iran if it changed its defence and security policies, laying out a list of 12 demands.
They included not only ending key elements of the nuclear programme, such as uranium enrichment, but also cutting support to militias across the Middle East, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, and withdrawing all its forces from Syria. It would also have to end its ‘‘missile proliferation’’.
Iranian support has been vital to the survival of the Assad regime in Syria. Faisal Mekdad, the Syrian deputy foreign minister, reiterated yesterday that Iranian troops were there at the invitation of the government in Damascus.
‘‘This topic is not even on the agenda of discussion, since it concerns the sovereignty of Syria,’’ he told the Russian Sputnik news agency.
Iran’s response suggested that the supreme leader was hedging his bets, partly by responding in kind. No senior figure has yet pledged to cancel the deal outright, even though hardline voices inside the regime have criticised it just as much as has the American right.
– The Times