The chief commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) says the country’s defensive might can neither be negotiated nor its progress can be stopped.

“In the area of enhancing [our] defensive capabilities, we can neither be stopped nor [expected to] retreat as this issue is one of our red lines,” Major General Hossein Salami said on Thursday at a ceremony held to pay tribute to the martyrs, who founded the IRGC’s Aerospace Division. “Therefore, the issue of [our] defensive might is non-negotiable, irreducible, unstoppable, and cannot be restrained,” he added.

The commander noted that the country has advanced far in the field of defensive capability and military industry, a plus point that has expanded the rate at which the IRGC would receive new state-of-the-art equipment.

“We, however, cannot expose [the details of these advancements] to the media,” Salami remarked.

Iran can take on whatever enemy

The commander further stated that the nation can lead a peaceful existence safe in the knowledge that the Iranian Armed Forces and the IRGC’s potential and capacity allow the forces to take on “whatever type of enemy, however big it may be, and crush it.”

Israel digging its own grave

Separately, Salami commented on Israel’s assassination of senior Palestinian resistance figures, saying, “Through these barbaric acts, the Zionist regime [of Israel] brings itself closer to certain demise step by step,” the commander remarked.

He stressed that the oppressed Palestinian nation always reserves the “legitimate right” to defend itself in the face of the Zionist regime’s crimes.

The Muslim world’s patience with Tel Aviv’s malicious actions is running out, he added, noting that by keeping up such actions, the regime would itself pave the way for its own downfall.

Salami’s remarks came in reaction to Israel’s assassination of Baha Abu al-Ata, 42, the commander of al-Quds Brigades — the Palestinian resistance movement of Islamic Jihad’s military wing — and his wife during a targeted strike against their home in Gaza City in the blockaded Gaza Strip on Tuesday.

The Israeli army confirmed the airstrike, saying it had taken place against Gaza’s Shejaiya area. The operation, it added, had been recommended by the chief of staff of Israel’s military and the Shin Bet domestic security service, and approved by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

A similar strike also hit the home of another Islamic Jihad commander in Syria on Tuesday, but missed the target.