Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Feb. 25 Radical Islamist militiamen affiliated to Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps staged military exercises in the western suburbs of Tehran on Friday to defend the Iranian capital against enemy assaults, a government-run news agency reported. Iran Focus
Tehran, Iran, Feb. 25 Radical Islamist militiamen affiliated to Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps staged military exercises in the western suburbs of Tehran on Friday to defend the Iranian capital against enemy assaults, a government-run news agency reported.
Some 2,500 members of the paramilitary Bassij took part in Friday mornings military drills in Qods (Jerusalem) Garrison in Tehrans Garm-Darreh district.
In the military exercises, the Bassij forces destroyed the positions of enemy forces who had been ferried to Tehran by helicopters and mopped up the drop zone, Isca-News reported.
The Bassij forces accomplished more than 90 percent of their mission, the report added.
Deputy Commander of the Bassij forces in Tehran, Brigadier General Ahmad Zolqadr, attended the rally. Zolqadrs brother, Mohammad-Baqer, is a top IRGC commander who was recently appointed as Deputy Interior Minister.
While the Revolutionary Guards and the Bassij regularly stage military and security exercises in Tehran and its suburbs, it is the first time that the objective of the war games is to destroy heliborne enemy forces in the Iranian capital.
The exercises were code-named Imam Hassan Askari, one of the two Shia Imams whose shrine was destroyed this week in Samarra, Iraq.
The Supreme Commander of the IRGC announced on Thursday that God and Muslims would carry out a retaliatory strike against the United States, Britain, and Israel, who he alleged were behind Wednesdays attack in Samarra.
Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad each separately announced that the attack on the revered shrine was the work of agents of the occupiers of Iraq and the Zionists.
