TEHRAN — Chief of Staff of Iran’s Armed Forces Major General Mohammad Bagheri says the Zionist regime would collapse if the U.S. and other Western countries stop their economic, political support for the regime.

“One day, the Zionist regime’s motto was ‘from the Nile to the Euphrates’ but today it is besieged and should find a solution for the reverse migration of the Jews,” Bagheri said in a TV interview on Saturday night.

“There have been day-and-night protests in front of the criminal prime minister of the Zionist regime, and instability is pervasive there,” he added.

Bagheri’s remarks came while Iran is in the final days of the Sacred Defense Week, which commemorates the martyrs and veterans of the 8-year war of Iraq against Iran in the 1980s.

“If the Zionists enter this region (Persian Gulf) and incidents happen that would disrupt our national security and defense, we will view them (the countries signing normalization deals with Israel) as the enemy’s base and we will deal with them in the same way we deal with the enemy,” General Bagheri warns. The Iraqi army invaded Iran on September 22, 1980, setting the stage for eight years of war. With support from certain Arab and Western countries, Saddam Hussein ordered an attack on Iran nearly 19 months after the Islamic Revolution.

The war drew to a close in August 1988. The United Nations declared Saddam as the initiator of the war.

According to official statistics, 225,570 Iranian people were martyred and 574,101 became disabled during the Sacred Defense. Also, the number of freed prisoners of war was 43,173.

“The Sacred Defense formed Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s resistance,” General Bagheri said, adding, “As a result, the Sacred Defense’s outreach has been much farther than our borders.”

He also pointed to the normalization of ties between “reactionary regimes of the region with the Zionist regime”, saying the UAE had sent numerous messages to Iran in the last two years to say that they are not like the Saudis and they want to be friendly toward Iran.

“We decided to ignore their wrongdoings and their support for the sanctions [against Iran],” he said.

However, Bagheri continued, their agreement with the Zionist regime completely changed Iran’s stance toward them. 

“If the Zionists enter this region (Persian Gulf) and incidents happen that would disrupt our national security and defense, we will view them as the enemy’s base and we will deal with them in the same way we deal with the enemy,” the general added.

Bahrain and the UAE have recently taken the rare step of fully normalizing ties with Israel. 

The U.S.-brokered normalization deals were signed on September 15 at a White House ceremony attended by high-ranking U.S. and foreign officials including President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Abdullah bin Zayed, the foreign minister of the UAE, and Abdullatif al-Zayani, the foreign minister of Bahrain.

The deals have been widely condemned in the public opinion of the Arab world, with some countries in the region, including Iran, denouncing the deals as treason. Iran denounced the normalization deals as “strategic stupidity” and “treason” against the Palestinian people.

MH/PA