IRGC commander: US disgraced in Persian Gulf

A senior commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) underlined Iran's supremacy over the US forces deployed in the Persian Gulf, and said Washington has been disgraced politically and militarily in the region."The political and military prestige of the US has sunk in the battle with the Iranian forces in the Persian Gulf," Commander of the IRGC's Second Naval Zone Ali Razmjou told reporters in Iran's Southern port city of Bushehr on Wednesday. He stressed the Iranian forces enjoy full capability to establish security in the Persian Gulf, and said the enemies of the Islamic Revolution, with the US on top of them, can pose no threat to the Islamic Republic in the international waterway. Iran has repeatedly warned that its Armed Forces are fully prepared to immediately deliver a crushing response to any offensive on Iranian territory. The United States and Israel have once again intensified their hostile measures against Iran to push the country to give up its progress in the field of civilian nuclear technology. Iran has warned it could close the strategic Strait of Hormuz if it became the target of a military attack over its nuclear program. Strait of Hormuz, the entrance to the strategic Persian Gulf waterway, is a major oil shipping route. A recent study by a fellow at Harvard's Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, Caitlin Talmadge, warned that Iran could use mines as well as missiles to block the strait, and that "it could take many weeks, even months, to restore the full flow of commerce, and more time still for the oil markets to be convinced that stability has returned". In a Sep. 11, 2008 report, the Washington Institute for the Near East Policy also said that in the two decades since the Iran-Iraq War, the Islamic Republic has excelled in naval capabilities and is able to wage unique asymmetric warfare against larger naval forces. According to the report, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Navy (IRGCN) has been transformed into a highly motivated, well-equipped, and well-financed force and is effectively in control of the world's oil lifeline, the Strait of Hormuz. The study says that if Washington takes military action against the Islamic Republic, the scale of Iran's response would likely be proportional to the scale of the damage inflicted on Iranian assets.