Mohsen Rezaei, the former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, said in a new television interview that after Ukraine’s attack on an Iranian commercial vessel in the Caspian Sea, Iran’s armed forces were ready to attack three points in Ukraine, but that decision was halted after what he described as Ukraine’s “apology.”

Mr. Rezaei’s reference is to a phone call between Iran’s and Ukraine’s foreign ministers, which, according to Abbas Araghchi, his Ukrainian counterpart, said Kyiv had no intention in the attack on the Ana commercial vessel in the Caspian Sea and that it carried it out as part of the war with Russia rather than as a move to increase tensions with Tehran.

In the course of the interview, Mr. Rezaei, who serves as the senior military adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader, claimed that in the final days of the 40-day war, “more precise Iranian drone and missile attacks on American bases,” which, in his view, caused “the Kuwait base to suffer severe damage,” were what led American forces to “leave Erbil in Iraq,” and that, along with the fact that CENTCOM commanders would be “transferred from Jordan to Israel,” the deterrent against an American ground attack on Iran was created.

📷Khamenei