Washington/Tehran, Jan 29, (dpa/GNA) – Iranian Parliamentary Speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, has warned President Donald Trump of the consequences for US soldiers in the region, if Washington decides to attack Iran.
“Maybe Mr Trump can start a war, but he doesn’t have control over how it ends” Ghalibaf told US television station CNN on Thursday.
Thousands of US soldiers stationed several thousand kilometres from home would definitely suffer, he added.
US Secretary Marco Rubio on Wednesday threatened Iran with a pre-emptive military strike, if the leadership in Tehran plans attacks on US military facilities.
During a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Rubio said the US has stationed 30,000 to 40,000 troops at eight or nine facilities in the Gulf region, all of which are within range of thousands of Iranian drones and short-range ballistic missiles.
He justified the build-up with protecting allies such as Israel from potential Iranian attacks.
There has been no independent confirmation of these figures, but similar estimates have been cited in earlier Pentagon reports.
The US administration has repeatedly threatened military intervention in Iran over its nuclear programme and violent suppression of mass protests earlier this year.
On Wednesday, Trump said that “another” US military fleet is on its way to Iran. It was not immediately clear whether Trump was referring to the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and the accompanying warships that had already arrived in the Middle East on Monday, or to other US military forces.
The US and Israel attacked Iranian nuclear facilities last June.
GNA