WarSclerotic

Iran Denies ‘War Footing’ – Middle East – News – Israel National News.

Iran tests new medium-range missile

Israel news photo: Iranian government

Iranian military officials on Wednesday denied the Islamic Republic had shifted to a war footing amid rising tensions with the West.

Chief of Iran’s Parliamentary Defense Committee rejected on Wednesday media reports that the Islamic Republic has recently gone on war alert, the English language satellite Press TV reported.

“Under the existing conditions, we have no indication that we should be in a particular and new military condition, and it is not correct that Iran’s armed forces are placed on a specific alert,” Gholam-Reza Karami, who heads the Iranian Parliament’s Defense Committee, told the Xinhua news agency.

Karami said the country is always prepared for any military encounter, said the report.

Recently, numerous western media sources reported Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) issued a war alert “amid a series of mysterious blasts and cyber attacks” in the country.

Earlier this week The Daily Telegraph said the IRGC had started to deploy long- range missiles and guards units to key defensive positions around the country after an order from its Chief Commander General Mohammad-Ali Jafari.

It was also reported Iran was preparing members of its covert foreign action Qud’s force to strike at targets outside Iran in the event of conflict.

On November 28, the IRGC commander, Gholam-Reza Jalali, dismissed media reports that a virus attack on Iran’s missile program caused the two successive explosions in the garrison of IRGC which killed a senior IRGC commander and 16 of IRGC members some 35 km away from the Iranian capital of Tehran.

It has been widely speculated the intelligence services of Israel and the United States were behind the blast.

According to Western officials Iran began to prepare for a confrontation after last month’s report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that produced evidence that Iran was actively working to produce nuclear weapons.

Iranian protesters last Tuesday stormed and ransacked the British embassy and British diplomatic compounds after an apparently state-approved rally denounced Britain’s support of U.S. sanctions over Iran’s controversial nuclear program.

The UK and its European allies have since begun discussions about a potential ban on all Iranian oil in response, which could prompt Iran to move to close the Straits of Hormuz – a strategic choke-point for 40% of the world’s oil.

Analysts say such a move could be the first step towards open military confrontation between Tehran and the West. Were Tehran to view strong sanctions on its critical oil exports as an “act of war,” which is how some Iranian officials are already defining such a move, it could lead to a dramatic escalation.

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