Tehran: An adviser to Iran's supreme leader who is a possible 2021 presidential candidate is warning that any American attack on the Islamic Republic could set off a “full-fledged war” in the Middle-east in the waning days of the Trump administration.
Speaking to The Associated Press, Hossein Dehghan struck a hard-line tone familiar to those in Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, a force he long served in before becoming a Defence Minister under President Hassan Rouhani.
A soldier has yet to serve as Iran's top civilian leader since its 1979 Islamic Revolution, in part over the initial suspicion that its conventional military forces remained loyal to the toppled shah. But hard-liners in recent years openly have suggested Iran move toward a military dictatorship given its economic problems and threats from abroad, particularly after President Donald Trump pulled America out of Tehran's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
“We don’t welcome a crisis. We don’t welcome war. We are not after starting a war," Dehghan said on Wednesday. “But we are not after negotiations for the sake of negotiations either.”
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Dehghan, 63, described himself as a “nationalist” with “no conventional political tendency” during an interview in his wood-panelled office in downtown Tehran. He's one of many likely to register to run in the June 18 election as Rouhani is term-limited from running again. Others likely include a young technocrat with ties to Iranian intelligence and former hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Dehghan's military service came under presidencies representative of the groups that largely compose Iran's tightly controlled political arena — reformists who seek to slowly change Iran's theocracy from within, hard-liners who want to strengthen the theocracy and the relative moderates between. Those calling for radical change are barred from running for office by Iran's powerful constitutional watchdog known as the Guardian Council, which serves under Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
While discussing the world Iran finds itself in, Dehghan's points mirrored many of Khamenei's. The former head of the Guard's air force who achieved the rank of brigadier general said any negotiations with the West could not include Iran's ballistic missiles, which he described as a “deterrent” to Tehran's adversaries.
Propaganda involving Iran's missile program has surged in recent weeks. The front page of the English-language Tehran Times on Wednesday showed a map of Iran’s missile ranges with red stars marking American bases across the region under the words “Back off!” printed in big, bold letters. A headline above warned Iran would respond to “any melancholy adventure by Trump.”
"The Islamic Republic of Iran will not negotiate its defensive power ... with anybody under any circumstances,” Dehghan said. “Missiles are a symbol of the massive potential that is in our experts, young people and industrial centres.”
Dehghan warned against any American military escalation in Trump’s final weeks in office.
“A limited, tactical conflict can turn into a full-fledged war,” he said. “The United States, the region and the world cannot stand such a comprehensive crisis.”
President-elect Joe Biden has said he's willing to return to the nuclear deal, which saw sanctions on Iran lifted in exchange for Tehran limiting its uranium enrichment if Iran first complies with its limits. Since Trump's withdrawal, Iran has gone beyond all the deal's restrictions while still allowing United Nations nuclear inspectors to work in the country. Dehghan said those U.N. checks should continue so long as an inspector is not a “spy.”