Iran has one of the world's strongest armies, senior commander says

The Yemeni information minister announced that 70 Iran-backed Houthis and members of the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) were killed in a US airstrike on Tuesday, claims denied by the IRGC, which called it “false news”.

The IRGC affiliated Tasnim News Agency called the Saturday announcement by Muammar Al-Eryani "psychological warfare”. Al-Eryani is the minister of Yemen's official government, which is at war with the Houthis.

"It seems that this false news has been published in the context of psychological warfare and in order to push the region towards an all-out war, while officials and military commanders of the Islamic Republic of Iran have repeatedly announced that the Yemeni Ansarullah forces are fighting the US and Israel completely independently,” Tasnim wrote.

Al-Eryani said in a press statement that the attack targeted a point that was "used to plan terrorist attacks against commercial ships and tankers in the Red Sea, Bab al-Mandab, and the Gulf of Aden” amid the Houthis’ maritime blockade.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet with US President Donald Trump in the White House on Monday, Fox News reported.

Netanyahu had said on Friday he thinks the chances of a nuclear deal between Iran and the US are extremely low and he wants to reach an understanding with Trump about striking Iran's nuclear facilities when diplomacy fails, Axios reported citing a senior Israeli official.

"We are not at all concerned about war. We will not be the ones to start a war, but we are fully prepared for any conflict," IRGC Chief Commander Hossein Salami said Saturday.

"We're ready for both psychological operations and military action by the enemy, but we will not retreat a single step."

He said Iran's enemy is spread across the region and is within the Islamic Republic military's reach everywhere.

Israel "is like a spread-out table in front of us. A great power has been amassed. If the enemy wishes to untie our hands so it can witness the reality of our power, we are ready."

Salami likened Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to Prophet Moses, saying he will lead Iranians through the turmoil just as Moses parted the Nile and brought his people safely through it.

He said the Iran-Israel confrontation is a "real war—a battle for survival and a clash between two entities."

"This is the greatest confrontation in the history of Muslims against polytheists, unbelievers, and hypocrites. This front is the most unequal battle in history since Ashura," he said. "The enemy has come with all its might to force the surrender and destruction of dignity, honor, identity, Islam, and [the principle of] leadership—but it cannot succeed."

"Iran seeks dialogue from a position of equality—not a situation in which it is threatened on one hand and asked to negotiate on the other," President Masoud Pezeshkian said Saturday.

"If you want negotiations, then what are the threats for?" he added, referring to Donald Trump's threats to bomb Iran if talks over its disputed nuclear program fail.

"Today, the United States not only humiliates Iran but also the world. This behavior contradicts its call for negotiations," he said.

Any potential US airstrike would target not only Iran's nuclear facilities but also its air defense and missile capabilities in a bid to prevent possible retaliation, the former commander of US Central Command told Iran International.

In an exclusive interview with Iran International, former CENTCOM commander and CIA chief David Petraeus said Donald Trump would not stop at a limited attack on Iran's nuclear sites and would go after the Islamic Republic's air defense and missile capabilities.

"You probably have to take out some of the retaliatory capacity of Iran as well because you don't want to just take out the nuclear program and then have them go after the bases where we have forces, and that would then bring in all these other countries, of course," he said.

"This is not just a surgical attack on discrete nuclear capabilities. This is against the retaliatory capabilities, against the defense capability, and that's what has to be done if you're going to carry out this operation."

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