DUBAI, Jan 31 (Reuters) – Iran will respond to any threat from the United States, Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ chief Hossein Salami said on Wednesday, as Washington weighs its response to the killing of American servicemen by Tehran-aligned militants.
“We hear threats coming from American officials, we tell them that they have already tested us and we now know one another, no threat will be left unanswered,” Salami said, according to semi-official Tasnim news agency.
In January 2020, the Revolutionary Guards targeted the Ain al-Asad U.S. base in Iraq following a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad that killed Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the elite Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
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Iran’s envoy to the United Nations, Amir Saeid Iravani, also warned on Wednesday that Tehran would respond decisively to any attack on its territory, its interests, or Iranian nationals outside its borders.
The comments from Iranian officials come a day after United States President Joe Biden announced he has decided how to respond to a drone attack by Iran-aligned Iraqi groups that killed U.S. service members in Jordan, without elaborating.
Several Iranian Revolutionary Guards have been killed following Israeli strikes in Syria, with five members dying on Jan. 20 and another two on Dec. 25.
On Monday, another Israeli strike hit what Tasnim described as an “Iranian military advisory centre” in Syria, killing two, but Iran’s envoy to Syria denied the details on the target and said the casualties were not Iranian.
On Jan. 15, Iran attacked what it says was an Israeli “spy headquarters” in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region.
(Reporting by Dubai Newsroom; Editing by Tom Hogue and Andrew Cawthorne)
