TEHRAN— Iran’s top military official has taken the EU sanctions against him with a pinch of salt, asking the Europeans to seize his properties and buy coal for the impending cold winter.

Writing on his personal account late on Sunday, Major General Mohammad Bagheri, Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, said, “The European Union put my name on the sanctions list 4 days ago because of what it called ‘sending unmanned drones from Iran to Russia’.”

He added, “Earlier, on November 4, 2019, the U.S. Treasury Department made such a mistake by including my name on its list of sanctions.”

The anger of the United States and its sequel, the European Union, is of course understandable, Bagheri said, noting, “From the beginning of the victory of the Islamic Revolution, the armed forces of the Islamic Republic were included in the list of sanctions, but our armed forces made an opportunity out of this threat. If they once spared barbed wire from our fighters, today they are lining up to buy Iranian missiles and drones.”

“In fact, it is the Europeans who, by taking the dead-end path of their master, America, have suffered from the problem of self-sanction from the truth. In Farsi, we have a proverb that says ‘A blind is carrying another blind's walking stick,’ or as the English say ‘The blind leading the blind.’”

Major General Bagheri emphasized, “However, I have a humanitarian request from the European Union. From today, I give them power of attorney in the implementation of the sanction they have prepared. They are allowed to identify and confiscate all the properties and assets of Major General Mohammad Hossein Bagheri in banks around the world and use them to buy coal for European citizens. A difficult winter is ahead!”