Iran Threatens ‘Full-Scale Offensive … No Political Border Will Be Safe’ if U.S. Airstrikes Don’t Stop
The Iran conflict threatened to boil over Saturday after a senior Iranian advisor threatened a “full-scale offensive operation” if U.S. airstrikes didn’t stop.
The ominous statements from Major General Mohsen Rezaei, a senior military adviser to Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, came after the United States finished a seventh day of airstrikes.
“If US strikes continue for several more days, we will move into a phase of full-scale offensive operations,” said Rezaei, who once served as the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
“Iran will no longer limit itself to retaliatory, like-for-like responses…and no political border will be safe,” he was quoted as saying by Iran’s news agency IRIB.
The two sides traded strikes which targeted bridges and other infrastructure, with Iran striking water and desalination plants in Kuwait, CNN reported.
Several American service members were injured in Iran’s retaliatory attacks, CBS News said Friday.
CNN’s Nic Robertson outlined the latest in the conflict Saturday morning, including Iranian strikes on Kuwait and attempts to target Saudi Arabia:
Kuwait is one of the countries that’s really been taking a hammering in these latest Israeli — latest Iranian strikes overnight and the water and desalination plant there hit significant enough damage and the government wanting to bring enough attention to it that their minister of electricity, water and renewable energies actually visited the site today.
Another serious and significant impact reported by Kuwaiti authorities saying that a site that significant damage was done to vital equipment at one of their main oil facilities, and that’s going to have an impact on its production capability several people there also injured.
Another significant change overnight was that Iran escalating in its strikes, trying to target two places in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia had not been hit up until now.
They were trying to hit, it appears the Red Sea port of Yanbu, that is and has been a red line for the Saudis in the past because it is their vital way of getting energy, oil out to the rest of the world via the Red Sea.
It’s on the west coast of Saudi Arabia, but also, it appears the Iranians are trying to strike an air base, Prince Sultan Air Base, where the U.S. Military has, until very recently at least, had military operations out of.
Now, the Iranians saying that water desalination plant there has been damaged, affecting a number of villages.
Watch above via CNN.
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