TEHRAN – The Iranian nation will never be fooled by calls for negotiations and the good cop, bad cop routine, says Major General Mohammad Hossein Baqeri, the Armed Forces Chief of Staff.

The U.S., under Donald Trump, has occasionally shown its willingness to hold talks with Tehran, while abandoning the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran and reimposing sanctions that the agreement had rescinded in order to put enormous new pressure on Iran’s economy.

The idea of talks with Trump’s America has been firmly rejected by Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say in critical issues.

In his Monday remarks, General Baqeri said the Islamic Republic, under the leadership of Ayatollah Khamenei, continues to advance in the path of creating an “Islamic civilization” with all power and deep understanding of the current circumstances, Mehr reported.

He said despite all the conspiracies, including the imposed war (Iraq’s war against Iran in the 1980s) and all the acts of sabotage and insecurity in Iran by the enemies, the country is at the peak of its power.

He also pointed to the release of the Iranian-operated Adrian Darya 1 supertanker, which was seized by British marines in the Strait of Gibraltar last month, saying it demonstrated the Islamic Republic’s power at the international level.

“The shooting down of an invading U.S. spy drone, the seizure of the violating British oil tanker, and last but not least, the release of our country’s tanker in Gibraltar, prove the fact that the Islamic Revolution strongly continues on its path to achieve its noble ideals,” the general remarked.

The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) in June shot down an American spy drone over Iran’s southern coastal province of Hormozgan.

In a statement then, the IRGC said the Global Hawk spy drone was brought down by its Aerospace Force near the Kouh-e Mobarak region — which sits in the central district of Jask County — after violating Iranian airspace.

A few weeks later, on July 19, the IRGC also seized the 30,000-tonne UK-flagged Stena Impero tanker, which had collided with an Iranian fishing boat and ignored its recurrent distress calls.

It came after Britain’s naval forces unlawfully seized the Adrian Darya 1 vessel, then known as Grace 1, and its cargo of 2.1 million barrels of oil in the Strait of Gibraltar under the pretext that the supertanker was carrying crude to Syria in violation of the European Union’s unilateral sanctions against the country, while Tehran strongly rejected the claim.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Baqeri slammed the efforts launched by the U.S. to form a coalition and hatch new plots in the Persian Gulf, saying such efforts have already failed.

The top commander further said the efforts were aimed to lay siege on the Islamic Republic and undermine its power in the region.

Baqeri’s comments came after the White House announced plans to create a new security initiative in the Persian Gulf by forming a coalition for escorting commercial ships.

However, Washington’s call to form the coalition has fallen on deaf ears. So far, only Britain and Israel have agreed to join the coalition. 
 
MH/PA