“If Europe wants to turn into a threat, we will increase the range of our missiles”


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Continuing the Iran regime’s stepped-up rhetorical campaign against the US, the Revolutionary Guards added a threat to Europe on Saturday.

A senior commander of the Guards, Gen. Hossein Salami (pictured), said on State TV:

So far we have felt that Europe is not a threat; therefore, we did not increase the range of our missiles. But if Europe wants to turn into a threat, we will increase the range of our missiles.

Tehran has been unsettled by the call of French President Emmanuel Macron, during a visit to Saudi Arabia earlier this month, for a negotiation over Iran’s ballistic missile program alongside the July 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and the 5+1 Powers (US, UK, France, Germany, China, and Russia).

Iran had been courting European leaders to try and detach them from the Trump Administration, which has stepped up sanctions on the Islamic Republic. However, Macron not only challenged Tehran’s rejection of talks over the missiles, but also sided with Iran’s rival Saudi Arabia over regional issues.

See Iran Daily, Nov 19: Tehran’s Europe Strategy Threatened by Rift With France

The overall commander of the Guards, Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, had said in October, “Our missiles have a 2,000-kilometer range, based on a limit prescribed by the commander in chief [the Supreme Leader].”

In his Saturday statement, Salami continued the regime’s campaign declaring that, after “victory” over the Islamic State, it would now triumph over the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia.

Intelligence services of the US, Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United Arab Emirates and some other countries, which are not currently in our interests to be named, created Daesh [the Islamic State] to overthrow the Syrian administration. We have information that in 2013 and 2014 hundreds of American cargo flights landed ammunition for Takfiri groups in the neighboring countries….

The threat of Daesh was very serious and if the domino effect of the fall of cities had continued, a big disaster would have threatened the Muslim world and even other countries. However, Iranian forces recognized the aptness of time and place and countered Daesh at the very beginning.

On both Tuesday and Wednesday, the Supreme Leader proclaimed that Iran has “managed to bring the US to its knees and defeat them in the region”. He said the defeat of ISIS in Syria and Iraq “was a blow against the past and current governments of America and the regimes linked to it”.

See Iran Daily, Nov 23: Supreme Leader — US Created ISIS…& We Defeated Them


Parliament Report: Social Security at Risk of Bankruptcy

Iran’s Social Security Organization is at serious risk of bankruptcy, according to Parliament’s Research Center.

“The likelihood of a financial insolvency of the Social Security Organization in the next decade is very high”, the report warns, saying that the crisis would be so great that the government would not be able to control it.

The Social Security Organization operates independently of the government to provide health insurance, pensions, and unemployment benefits to its members, from workers to government employees to self-employed individuals. More than 42 million Iranians, about 52%, receive some type of benefit.

According to the Research Center, the Social Security funds are at risk because a rapid increase in the number of beneficiaries with an aging population, low birth rates, and increasing costs of health-care services. The report also cites mismanagement and the government’s interference and failure to meet its financial obligations.

The SSO owns dozens of unprofitable companies, and its former head was convicted of corruption charges in 2016. Its debt to banks has jumped from less than $1 million in 2011 to more than $2 billion last year

On Monday, MPs warned about the possible bankruptcy and urged the government to start paying its debts to the fund, which take up much of the more than $36 billion owed to the organization.