WANA (Sep 21) – Iran’s Armed Forces General Staff and the Central Headquarters of Khatam al-Anbiya have vowed that the country’s Army, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Ministry of Defense, Law Enforcement Command (FARAJA), Basij forces and border guards “will not back down” in defending Iran’s national interests, the rights of its people and territorial integrity against its adversaries.
In a statement marking the annual Sacred Defense Week (Iran-Iraq War), the Armed Forces General Staff and Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters said Iranian forces would make the country’s “American and Zionist enemies and their allies” experience further defeats.
The statement said September 22, marking the beginning of the Iran-Iraq War in 1980, represents a major chapter in the history of the Islamic Revolution.
It described the eight-year war as a period during which the Iranian people, relying on their faith and unity, resisted the military aggression of the former Ba’athist regime in Iraq as well as political, security and economic pressure from the Eastern and Western powers.
According to the statement, Iran emerged from the war without losing “even an inch” of its territory and inflicted what it described as an “irreparable defeat” on the global powers and the U.S.-led regional order, including the Ba’athist regime in Iraq.
The statement said the lessons and experiences of the eight-year Iran-Iraq War contributed to the development of Iran’s defense capabilities and military power, moving the country toward what it called a “strong Iran.”
It further stated that the United States and Israel were forced to “kneel” before the Iranian people and their armed forces during what the statement described as the “12-day imposed war” and the “Ramadan War.”
The Armed Forces General Staff said that Iran’s armed forces currently rely on God, public support, domestic expertise, strategic self-sufficiency in defense industries and advanced military technologies.
It noted that Iranian forces had inflicted heavy damage on the military and security infrastructure and strategic interests of the United States and Israel in West Asia, thereby changing regional security equations in favor of what it called the Islamic Ummah and the Iranian people.
The statement cited what it described as Iran’s “management” of the Strait of Hormuz under Iranian arrangements, the weakening of the U.S. military’s “hegemony,” and the degradation of Israel’s military capabilities as examples of these developments.
It added that the Iranian people, relying on their faith and national capabilities, would withstand the enemy’s “combined attacks,” particularly economic, cognitive and media warfare, and inflict another defeat on what it described as global hegemony.
The Armed Forces General Staff and Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters also commemorated the late founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and what the statement referred to as the “martyred leader of the Ummah,” Ayatollah Khamenei. It paid tribute to those killed and wounded, as well as their families, during the eight-year Iran-Iraq War and the second and third “imposed wars”.
The statement said the armed forces had renewed their pledge of allegiance to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Seyed Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei, and assured the Iranian people that personnel from the Army, IRGC, Ministry of Defense, FARAJA, Basij and border forces “will not back down” from defending national interests, the rights of the people and Iran’s territorial integrity.
It concluded by saying that Iran’s armed forces would make “the aggressors and ill-wishers of the Iranian people,” particularly the United States, Israel and their allies, “taste the bitter flavor of further defeats.”