High-ranking IRGC officers and hardliner loyalists have been suggesting that the Islamic Republic should deploy volunteers and military forces to Lebanon to assist Hezbollah in the wake of devastating Israeli strikes.
IRGC General Esmail Kowsari, who is currently a member of the Iranian parliament's national security committee, told Didban Iran website in Tehran: "Although the Lebanese Hezbollah is capable of confronting the IDF, we welcome the deployment of volunteer forces to Lebanon from Iran."
Kowsari also promised that Israel's spies and infiltrators in Lebanon will be identified and punished. Following the death of Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah in Beirut in an Israeli strike last week, some hardliners in Iran, including the former head of the international affairs department of Khamenei's office and former lawmaker and intelligence officer Mohammad Hassan Asafari insisted that volunteers from Iran should be deployed to Lebanon.
Hardliners in Iran made similar claims last year, vowing to send millions of volunteers to Gaza following the October 7 attack on Israel and the outbreak of war. However, reaching Gaza was physically impossible at the time. Now, in response to these renewed statements, Iranians opposed to the Islamic Republic are pointing out that the road to Lebanon is open, and those who truly “volunteer” should have no hesitation in going.
Meanwhile, videos circulating on social media showed banners calling for the deployment of Iranian combatants through Tehran airport. A viewer who shared one of these videos with Iran International TV mentioned that buses were on-site to transport volunteers to the airport, but no actual deployment plan seemed to be in place upon arrival.
Kowsari further opined that Israeli forces are not capable of being involved in military actions in two fronts in Gaza and Lebanon, despite clear evidence to the contrary.
Another IRGC General Morteza Rafighdoost, who was the Islamic Republic's IRGC Minister from 1982 to 1988, said in an interview that "All options including deploying military forces from Iran to Lebanon and the Golan Heights in Syria is on Iran's agenda."
Rafighdoost claimed that "Iran has the manpower for decades of war against all the world powers." He also stated that Iran does not need the support of Russia or China in its confrontation with Israel. Furthermore, he boasted that Iran’s massive ballistic missile attack on Israel had brought joy to "hundreds of millions of people" worldwide, despite widespread condemnation of the attack and evidence showing that many missiles failed to hit their targets.
Meanwhile, aviation experts on social media criticized Iranian officials for not clearing the country's airspace before launching the October 1 attack. Videos on social media show passenger aircraft changing route over Urmia and landing in Shiraz against a backdrop of missiles flying in the sky despite the obvious danger for civilians. In the meantime, some failing missiles dropped in areas including Zanjan near Tehran.
In another interview, IRGC General Nosrat Ahvazian claimed that at least two million Iranians were ready to be deployed to Lebanon to fight Israel. However, in the same interview, he dismissed Israeli officials’ promises of a major retaliatory attack on Iran following Tehran's ballistic missile strike on Tuesday night. Interestingly, despite initially citing the two million figure, Ahvazian later stated that 400,000 Iranian "resistance fighters" were prepared for deployment to Lebanon, contradicting his earlier claim.
Ahvazian who led a secret IRGC headquarters during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, further claimed that tens of Iranian youths call him over the phone every day and beg to be deployed to Lebanon.
In a more strange comment, Ahvazian said that the reason why Israeli forces have attacked Lebanon is that they want to flee Gaza where they have a hard time fighting Hamas.
These and similar remarks about Iranians' willingness to fight in Lebanon seem to be part of the IRGC's psychological operations aimed at masking their own and the public’s fear of an impending major strike on Iran’s infrastructure, as promised by Israeli officials.
