Iran military warns renewed US-Israeli war would be costlier

According to Al Jazeera, commanders from Iran’s General Staff, the IRGC and the army recently met Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei to discuss the response to another attack. They said the response would be immediate and could go beyond West Asia. IRGC spokesman Hossein Mohebbi said the force was “100 percent ready,” while army spokesman Mohammad Akraminia said commanders would rely on asymmetric warfare and that some weaponry had been renovated and new equipment and tactics added during the ceasefire that followed a June memorandum of understanding with the US.

Former senior IRGC commander Hossein Kanani Moghaddam told Al Jazeera that Iran’s target database had expanded and that missile range, accuracy and warheads and drone capabilities had improved. He also claimed Iran could “easily target supertankers” in the Strait of Hormuz and said attacks on US Navy vessels had kept them out of the waterway, while the US has maintained a naval blockade on southern Iranian ports. These claims could not be independently verified.

Al Jazeera reported that Iranian cities lack shelters and early warning systems and that the electricity grid, oil and gas facilities, petrochemical and steel plants, and roads and railways could be attacked again. A state-linked analyst, Hamzeh Rahim Safavi, said on television that intelligence weakness was the main cause of the blows Iran suffered and that no one was being held accountable. He also said calls by hardliners to acquire a nuclear bomb would not repair those weaknesses.