Commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps’ (IRGC) Aerospace Force, Brigadier General Majid Mousavi said the Iranian armed forces “must prepare for any situation.”
His statement came shortly after Israeli officials and military commanders said Tel Aviv could wage new strikes on Iran.
In his inaugural televised interview on Tuesday evening, Mousavi said Iran’s armed forces “must prepare for any situation,” but added that “the most important task is the correct understanding of our responsibility in this arena.”
Mousavi described Iran’s resilience as “an ever-repeating Ashura,” signaling that the war with Israel could recur at any moment.
He vowed to uphold Iran’s deterrence doctrine “until blood flows in our veins, we will continue guarding the revolution.”
The newly appointed general then linked Iran’s operational readiness to spiritual destiny, “urging personnel to emulate martyrs who lived and fought for the ultimate goal: delivering this flag to its true owner, Imam Mahdi.”
On Tuesday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said there is a possibility of a renewed campaign against Iran, according to a statement from his office.
His statements came during a multi-scene situation assessment with several top Israeli military officials, including the chief of staff, Eyal Zamir.
Katz stressed the necessity of formulating an effective enforcement plan for the future to ensure that Iran does not restore its nuclear program.
He also addressed ongoing regional conflicts, saying “there are two open fronts - Gaza and Yemen - which must be decisively resolved under a firm offensive policy, as was done in Iran, Lebanon and Syria.”
On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that for more than two weeks, mysterious explosions and fires have erupted across Iran, setting ablaze apartment complexes and oil refineries, a road outside a major airport and even a shoe factory.
It wrote that in public, Iranian officials have shrugged off the events as mere coincidence or blamed aging infrastructure, trying to soothe the frayed nerves of a population still traumatized by the country’s war with Israel and the United States in June.
But in private, three Iranian officials, including a member of the IRGC told the newspaper they believed that many of them were acts of sabotage.
The three Iranian officials said they believed that saboteurs might have wanted to stoke panic among judges and prosecutors that they could be targeted, similar to the way Israel previously attacked scientists involved in Iran’s nuclear program.
The Guards member said that the cumulative effect of the near-daily explosions - even if some of them were accidents - was a growing sense of anxiety among both officials and Iranians more broadly.
A European official who deals with Iran said he had also assessed the attacks as sabotage and suspected Israel of involvement, based on its history in Iran - both as a form of psychological warfare and to take out targets.
The Iranian authorities who spoke publicly cited other causes for the explosions, including gas leaks, garbage fires and old infrastructure. But they have also not given the public a convincing explanation of why gas explosions are occurring at a rate of one to two per day across the country.
The national gas company released statistics that it argued showed no notable increase in explosions from gas leaks this year compared with last year’s.
To cope with the stress, many Iranians have turned to dark comedy. On social media, they have been sharing photoshopped pictures of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, wearing the uniform of Iran’s national gas company.
Meanwhile, Abdollah Haji Sadeghi, a representative of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, said Israel tried to “achieve all its goals” during the first 48 hours of the war.
“They thought that the economic pressures had exhausted the Iranian people and that the hand of the country in the region had been cut off,” he said.
“They bet on internal chaos and had planned to hit two power centers, the nuclear program and the missile system,” he said, adding that “their plan has miserably failed.”
