TEHRAN, Feb 22 - A senior Iranian general says the country will definitely avenge the recent terrorist attack on IRGC forces in Sistan and Baluchestan, but the revenge will not be limited to "a bunch of terrorists".
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - Brigadier General Hossein Salami, the lieutenant commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), told IRNA on Friday that the recent deadly attack on Iranian border guards will not be left unpunished.
"We cannot disclose the way in which we will respond to the terrorists, but no act will remain unanswered," he said.
"The scale of Iran's revenge is not limited to clashes with four terrorists; we rather will track the terrorists and find who they are linked to," the top general said.
"Our responses are strong, and those who receive it will get familiar with them," General Salami warned.
The top commander also slammed the "hostile" behaviors of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) which Iran says have masterminded the Zahedan attack, but at the same time noted that such terror attacks are too trivial to undermine Iran's deterrence power.
"We seek to defeat big powers, and such incidents are too small for us."
The IRGC's chief commander earlier warned Saudi Arabia and the UAE that they could face retaliatory measures for supporting terrorists on behalf of the US and Israel.
General Mohammad Ali Jafari on Saturday stressed that Iran would give a "decisive" response to the Wednesday terrorist attack which killed 27 IRGC border guards in Zahedan-Khash road.
"The patience that the establishment once exercised against conspiracies and reactionary regimes in the region, especially Saudi Arabia and the UAE which carry out these acts on orders from the US and the Zionist regime, will be different and we will definitely take reparative measures," he said.
A few days after the attack, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman received a warm welcome in Islamabad, where he threw Pakistan an economic lifeline.
Iran’s Major General Qassem Soleimani on Thursday cautioned Pakistan against the true intentions behind Saudi Arabia's pumping of billions of dollars into its troubled economy, saying the Riyadh regime is after breaking the Asian state apart by pitting it against its neighbors.
"Saudi-sponsored terrorists on Pakistani soil are causing trouble for all of the country's neighbors, and Pakistan must fully realize this matter," he said, adding that the Asian country must not turn into a place for activities that disturb regional states such as Iran, India and Afghanistan.
In reaction to Iran's warnings, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi told Dunya TV Friday that Islamabad will extend all-out cooperation to Iran over the terror attack.
"We have strongly condemned the terrorist attack in Iran and we are in touch with Iran over the issue," he noted.
“I had a detailed telephonic discussion with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and we have also sent an expert level delegation to Iran which also met with the leaders of Islamic Revolution Guards Corps,” said the minister.
Qureshi said Iran and Pakistan have agreed to cooperate with each other and "we will address the Iranian concerns and remove all differences."
“We have developed an understanding to stop such attacks on border areas through a joint center for quick response.”
'US involved in Zahedan attack'
Former Pakistani defense secretary Naeem Khalid Lodhi said the US was involved in the attack and still supported its perpetrators.
In an article entitled "the Hidden US Game," published in the Urdu-language newspaper "Dunya (the World)" on Thursday, former Pakistani defense secretary Naeem Khalid Lodhi wrote, "I think the US supports the perpetrators of the Zahedan terrorist attack.”
The former Pakistani military official, who is a fellow at Islamabad-based research center (CSCR), said the Zahedan attack was undoubtedly a covert operation aimed at creating tension between Tehran and Islamabad.
According to Lodhi, Washington has long been seeking to destabilize Pakistan, but when it failed to reach that goal it sought to destabilize the whole region in order to deflect the international community’s attention from its withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Source: Presstv