The spokesman for Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) says the elite military force will not hesitate to strike other Israeli bases in Iraqi Kurdistan region if its officials do not dismantle them.
“It is our natural right to destroy any base from which any attack is carried out against the security of Iran and this is a red line” for us, Brigadier General Ramezan Sharif told Yemen’s Arabic-language al-Masirah television network on Thursday.
According to Sharif, Iran’s ambassador in Iraq Iraj Masjedi had on several occasions warned the Iraqi Kurdistan region about the presence of the Mossad base, which was recently attacked by the IRGC, and two other similar bases.
“If Iraqi officials do not take action to remove other bases of Zionists in this country while our security continues to be threatened from this region, we will respond without hesitation,” the IRGC's spokesman added.
“Zionists had admitted themselves that their drones, which flew over a [military] base in [Iran’s] Kermanshah [province] had taken off from their bases in Erbil [capital city of the Iraqi Kurdistan region],” the IRGC official said.
Iran’s permanent mission to the United Nations has written to the UN secretary-general and the head of the Security Council, saying Tehran “reserves its inherent right to self-defense, under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, to respond to such criminal act whenever it deems appropriate.”
‘Iraq will not allow threats against neighbors’
Separately, the first deputy speaker of the Iraqi parliament said on Thursday that Baghdad will not accept any foreign country to use Iraqi soil to threaten the country’s neighbors.
“We will not accept any intelligence agency or a foreign country working in Iraq to threaten neighboring countries,” Hakim Al-Zamili warned.
Al-Zamili also said that a parliamentary fact-finding committee is investigating the incident.
