The commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, the Islamic Republic’s war room, said that the United States’ actions increase the risk of a broad escalation of fighting in the region.

Ali Abdollahian, in remarks broadcast on the state-run IRIB television, said that regional countries should know that the United States intends to use their wealth, infrastructure, and resources “as a defensive shield for its weakened army.”

He urged these countries to reconsider their “cooperation and alignment” with the United States and warned that any country that becomes America’s defensive shield “will burn in the flames of war.”

Abdollahian, who has been in charge of the Khatam al-Anbiya headquarters since late Khordad 1404, is listed in the U.S. Treasury Department’s sanctions.

He replaced Ali Shadmani, who had taken that post only a few days after the killing of Gholamali Rashid. Rashid was killed in an Israeli airstrike on 23 Khordad 1404. Shadmani became his successor and, four days later, was wounded in an airstrike on a command center in Tehran, and on 4 Tir 1404, he died.