Iran dismisses Trump’s military threats as hollow, self-defeating

Ghanbar Naderi

Press TV, Tehran

There is a good reason why the Persian Gulf is chronically unstable. The region has been the scene of large-scale wars during the past two decades and they have all been instigated by the United States and its allies. That’s according to many Iranian officials and students. They criticize the US for its many failed and needless military misadventures, arguing that the US depends on wars to justify its very existence.

Speaking to Press TV, some Iranian students said only regional countries are fit to take care of their own security issues, and that US military presence is the reason why the region has never been stable in recent years.

It’s a sentiment also shared by Iranian officials. They say the US military presence in the region is not needed and is illegal. 

This came after Trump announced on Twitter that he has instructed the US Navy to destroy all Iranian gunboats if they harass American ships. He was responding to a baseless claim by the US Navy that Iranian boats had harassed American Naval vessels in the Persian Gulf. Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, however, has dismissed the claim as bogus, stressing that provocative moves by foreign forces in the region are a threat to Iran’s national security.