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Eurasia
July 27, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 20
Iranian general mocks “Mr Trump the gambler”, derides his “cabaret” language bne IntelliNews
Over to you Big Boy – all eyes were on Donald Trump’s tweet stream late on July 26 as senior Iranian military commander Qassem Suleimani squared up to the US president, mocking the threats he has lately made to Iran on Twitter, likening him to a gambler and cabaret owner, deriding the performance of US armed forces in Afghanistan and warning that the Red Sea region was no longer secure for the American military.
With tensions building over Trump’s policy of tar- geting an unprecedented range of heavy sanctions at Iran in a bid to economically cripple the country to the point where Tehran has no choice but to renegotiate its role in the Middle East, Major Gen- eral Suleimani – who is in charge of the Quds force, the arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) that takes on operations outside of Iran and clandestine assignments – said during a speech in Iran’s western city of Hamedan that Trump should know that the Islamic Republic would be the one to “end” any war between their two countries.
“I’m telling you, Mr Trump the gambler, I am tell- ing you: know that where you are not thinking of, we are near you. Places you cannot imagine, we are next to you,” said Suleimani, according to a Tasnim news agency report.
He added: “We, the Iranian nation, have gone through tough events. You may begin a war, but it is us who will end it. Go ask your predecessors about it. So stop threatening us. We are ready to stand up against you. The Red Sea which was secure is no longer secure for the presence of American [mili- tary]... The Quds force and I are your match. We don’t go to sleep at night before thinking about you.”
Suleimani’s warning to the US about the Red
Sea comes on the same day Saudi Arabia, Iran’s regional arch-rival, suspended oil exports through
the Bab al-Mandeb strategic shipping lane due to missile attacks on two oil tankers by Iranian- backed Houthi rebels off the Yemen coast.
Referring to Trump’s ALL-CAPS tweeted threat addressed to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani
– a pragmatic centrist who despite protests from Iranian hardliners in late 2015 decided to trust the US enough in putting Iran’s signature to the multi- lateral nuclear deal which Trump went on to uni- laterally abandon in early May this year – Suleimani reportedly told Trump in his speech: “It is not in our president’s dignity to respond to you, but I, as a soldier, will.” He then added: “[Your] language be- longs to cabarets. Only a cabaret owner uses such language to communicate with the world.”
“What could you do that you haven’t already done over the past 20 years?” Suleimani, sometimes referred to as “The Shadow Commander”, asked
of the US. “You came to Afghanistan with dozens of tanks and armoured vehicles and hundreds of advanced helicopters and committed crimes there but what the hell have you achieved [in Afghanistan] between 2001 and 2018 with 110,000 troops? Isn’t it that now you are begging the Taliban to negotiate?”
The Iranian commander, who according to the Guardian once called US soldiers in Iraq “pants- pissing wimps” during a visit to Syria, also threw further insults, saying: “Have you forgotten that you were providing your soldiers with adult nappies and today you are threatening us? What the hell could you do in the 33-day war [between US ally Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006] other than ac- cepting Hezbollah’s conditions for an end to war?”
The most dangerous aspect of the US sanctions campaign for Iran is Washington’s demand that all countries cease buying Iranian oil by November
4. Oil export revenues are indispensable to Iran’s economy and Tehran has threatened to block the