tehran
\nIran\u2019s Army Chief Major General Amir Hatami on Sunday warned the United States against any attempt to claim the strategic waterway as US territory, saying, \u201cYou are very wrong! Even joking about this is a massive mistake. This is Iran, and it has guardians who will break your leg.\u201d
\nSpeaking at a ceremony marking National Journalists\u2019 Day, Hatami described the strategic waterway as a \u201cdivine geopolitical capacity\u201d for Iran, saying it would never return to its previous status.
\nHatami said activating Iran\u2019s geopolitical leverage over the strait was necessary to remove the threat of war from the country, adding that Iran would defend it with all its strength.
\nHe also claimed that Iranian forces had struck the US aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln at least once, temporarily grounding its fighter jets.
\nHatami also announced a financial reward for anyone who kills or captures a US soldier involved in an act of aggression, saying the era of American military presence in the Persian Gulf was permanently over.
\nHe said a new initiative had been launched with support from public crowdfunding campaigns, under which Iranian citizens could contribute funds to support the armed forces\u2019 defence operations.
\n\u201cUnder the scheme, anyone who kills or captures a US soldier and hands them over to Iranian authorities will receive a reward of 5 billion tomans, equivalent to about $30,000,\u201d Hatami said.
\nHe added that Iranian women who accomplish the feat would receive double the reward.
\nAn Iranian military official said that Qatar should allow an Iranian team to enter the country to investigate the fate of pilots whom Tehran says were captured by Qatari forces, Iranian media reported.
\nQatar denies holding any Iranian pilots. Doha said on Saturday that its search and rescue teams had found the remains of one pilot after Iranian aircraft violated Qatari airspace in March and failed to respond to attempts to contact them.
\nQatar said it had contacted Iran to coordinate the handover of the remains and had invited Tehran to review details of its search and rescue operations, but had received no response.
\nMohammad Baqerzadeh, commander of the Committee for the Search for Missing Persons of Iran\u2019s Armed Forces General Staff, said an Iranian Air Force expert and fact-finding team had been waiting for months to enter Qatar, according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency.
\nBaqerzadeh accused Qatari officials of repeatedly delaying the investigation and preventing the pilots\u2019 return to Iran. He called for the International Committee of the Red Cross to urgently follow up on the case.
\nBaqerzadeh also said Kuwait was similarly withholding information about the fate of four Iranians held in Kuwait.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
tehran Iran\u2019s Army Chief Major General Amir Hatami on Sunday warned the United States against any attempt to claim the strategic waterway as US territory, saying, \u201cYou are very wrong! Even joking about this is a massive mistake. This is Iran, and it has guardians who will break your leg.\u201d Speaking at a ceremony marking …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":101740,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101728"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101749,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101728\/revisions\/101749"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}