The head of Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiyah Central Headquarters said in a recent interview that Iran had created six armies outside the country’s borders, in a “corridor” stretching from Iran all the way to the Mediterranean Sea.
Speaking at a ceremony commemorating the Iran-Iraq war that aired on Iran’s IRINN television on Sept. 25, Maj. Gen. Gholam Ali Rashid said that these armies, among them Hamas and Hezbollah, deterred the enemies of the Islamic Republic, in particular the United States and Israel.
According to Rashid, three months before being killed in Iraq by the United States, Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, had attended a meeting of the Khatam al-Alanbiya HQ with the commanders of the armed forces.
In this corridor, said Rashid, “there are six religiously devout and popular divisions. Any enemy that decides to fight against the Islamic Revolution, and against the sacred regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran, will have to go through these six armies. It won’t be able to do so.”
One of these armies is in Lebanon, said Rashid, and is called Hezbollah.
“Another army is in Palestine, and it is called Hamas and the Islamic Jihad. One army is in Syria. Another army is in Iraq, and is called the PMU [Popular Mobilization Units], and another army is in Yemen, and is called Ansar Allah [the Houthis],” he added.
The anger of the United States and “the Zionist regime” with regard to Iran stemmed from their realization that the Islamic Republic possesses not only a “powerful” conventional armed force, prepared to defend the country from within, but also this “regional force” outside Iranian territory.
This is an edited version of an article first published by the Middle East Media Research Institute.