The commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami, claimed on Tuesday his rogue regime is “broadening the battlefront” against Israel and America to hasten the collapse of both nations.
Salami claimed that the existence of both America and Israel “is coming to an end” in the immediate future and that Iran needed the help of every Muslim nation on earth to eradicate free societies because “if the enemy manages to infiltrate into a Muslim state, it will go on with others.”
According to the IRGC-affiliated Tasnim News Agency, Salami claimed that Iran – without specifying if the government directly or its terrorist proxy arms – had “blocked” Israel’s access to parts of the Mediterranean Sea.
“We are broadening the battlefront so that the enemy becomes disintegrated,” he claimed, stating it was necessary for Muslim countries to attack Israel to “safeguard our assets and identities.”
Reports on Salami’s comments did not clearly state what operations, if any, the IRGC was conducting to “broaden the battlefront” into the Mediterranean Sea. While the IRGC itself has not announced any new operations there, the Iran-affiliated “Islamic Resistance in Iraq,” a coalition of Iran-backed Shiite militias, issued a statement on Tuesday claiming to attack Israel in the Mediterranean. The “Islamic Resistance in Iraq” is widely believed to consist of members of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), a group of Iran-backed Shiite militias that fought the Sunni Islamic State terrorist group and have been formalized as a wing of the Iraqi military.
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PressTV reported on Tuesday that the “Islamic Resistance in Iraq” claimed to conduct drone strikes against Israeli-operated platforms in the Leviathan gas field in the Mediterranean. The bombings were allegedly meant “in support of our people in Gaza.”
Israeli authorities have not confirmed at press time any material damage caused by the alleged “Islamic Resistance in Iraq” strikes, which have mostly been reported in Iranian media.
Another Iranian terrorist proxy, the Houthi jihadist movement of Yemen, also issued an announcement on May 3 that its fighters would turn to the Mediterranean. The Houthis have engaged in a campaign of attacking random commercial ships in the Red Sea in the past six months, allegedly intended to discourage trade with Israel.
“We will target any ships heading to Israeli ports in the Mediterranean Sea in any area we are able to reach,” Houthi spokesman Yahya Saree declared.
In addition to the Mediterrean Sea, the IRGC announced this week that it had sent its first warship into the Southern Hemisphere. The Shahid Mahdavi, a refurbished commercial ship now used for military purposes, crossed into the Southern Hemisphere this week for an unspecified “long-distance mission,” PressTV claimed.
In his remarks on Tuesday, Salami, the Iranian IRGC commander, said Iran was “protecting [its] own country’s national security and also the security and dignity of other Muslims” by antagonizing and supporting terrorism against Israel. The Iranian state outlet PressTV quoted Salami as declaring America and Israel “the most abhorrent regimes on earth” and claimed Israel was close to “brain death.”
“Through US military and political support and on the West artificial respiration, it (Israel) has been able to extend its existence which is coming to an end,” Salami reportedly declared.
Salami was speaking at an event to condemn an airstrike on an Iranian outpost in Damascus on April 1 that killed another IRGC commander, Mohammad Reza Zahedi, and several other IRGC officials. Israel is widely believed to have been responsible for the airstrike.
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U.S. Naval Forces Central Command / U.S. 5th FleetThe IRGC is a U.S.-designated terrorist organization and a formal arm of the Iranian military. Following his death, the Iranian Coalition Council of Islamic Revolution Forces, a group associated with the regime, claimed that Zahedi was intimately involved in the “planning and execution” of the mass murder of an estimated 1,200 people and abduction of 250 others in Israel on October 7. Among the documented atrocities committed by Hamas members on October 7 were the mass killing of children as young as infants, widespread gang rape and executions during gang rapes, and the desecration of corpses.
The terror commander’s comments occurred on the same day that Israel confirmed a military operation in Rafah, the southernmost point of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. The operation was intended to neutralize Hamas’s ability to use the Rafah border crossing into Egypt to supply itself for terrorist activity, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Tuesday.
Operations in Rafah have become a point of contention between the Israeli government and the left-wing administration of President Joe Biden. On Tuesday, an unnamed “senior administration official” in the Biden government said that Biden had decided to halt a shipment of 1,800 2,000-lb (907 kg) bombs and 1,700 500-lb (226 kg) bombs to Israel, meant to protect the country from the Iran-backed terror threats surrounding it, out of concern that they would be used in Rafah.
“We have not made a final determination on how to proceed with this shipment,” the official reportedly said.
Iran, alongside much of the Muslim world, has demanded that Israel refrain from activities in Rafah, as its ongoing operation in Gaza has largely neutralized Hamas in most of the rest of the territory, which Hamas rules. The IDF operation in Gaza is a self-defense operation in response to the Hamas atrocities of October 7, which Hamas spokesmen have said on the record that Iran played a direct role in.
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