Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Prepare for War

 

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have been placed on a war footing amid signs that the United States and its allies are taking action to cripple the country’s nuclear weapons development program.

Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s spiritual leader, ordered the heads of the nation’s military, intelligence and security organization to “take all necessary measures to protect the regime,” The Telegraph reported.

In response, Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, commander of the Revolutionary Guards, ordered units to move Iran’s arsenal of long-range missiles to secret sites where they would be safe from attack and could launch retaliatory strikes.

The Iranian air force has also formed “rapid reaction units” that are practicing a response to an enemy airstrike, according to The Telegraph.

Khamenei’s order came in response to growing pressure on the Islamic Republic over its nuclear program, and mounting evidence that Iran is being targeted by Western forces seeking to destroy key elements of the program.

An explosion at a Revolutionary Guard Corps base 30 miles west of Tehran on Nov. 12 leveled buildings and killed 17 people, including a founder of Iran’s ballistic missile program, Gen. Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam.

Iranian officials called the explosion an accident.

“However, many former U.S. intelligence officials and Iran experts believe that the explosion — the most destructive of at least two dozen unexplained blasts in the last two years — was part of a covert effort by the U.S., Israel, and others to disable Iran’s nuclear and missile programs,” the Los Angeles Times reported.

American and Israeli engineers are suspected of feeding the Stuxnet computer worm into Iran’s nuclear program in 2010. The virus caused centrifuges used to enrich uranium to shatter.

Two senior nuclear physicists were killed and a third wounded by bombs attached to cars or motorcycles in January and November of last year.

In September, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, accused the U.S., Israel and the U.K. of conducting attacks on him and other scientists. Abbasi-Davani was reportedly wounded in a 2010 car bomb blast, National Journal reported.

There have also been reports of unexplained explosions in Iranian gas pipelines, oil installations, and military facilities. Three such explosions occurred in October in a 24-hour period, and a large blast was reported recently in Iran’s third-largest city, Isfahan.

A senior Western intelligence official told The Telegraph: “There is deep concern within the senior leadership of the Iranian regime that they will be the target of a surprise military strike by either Israel or the U.S. For that reason they are taking all necessary precautions to ensure they can defend themselves properly if an attack happens.”

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