A senior official in the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) said Friday that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been asleep for the past 40 years if he thinks Iran will bend to America’s demand that they withdraw from Syria.

“The US secretary of state’s remarks indicate that he has been sleeping over the past 40 years and is unaware of what has happened during these years in the world and the region,” Lieutenant Commander of the IRGC for Political Affairs Brigadier General Yadollah Javani told Iran’s state-run and operated Tasnim News Agency.

Speaking at the Heritage Foundation on Tuesday, Pompeo said, “Iran must withdraw all forces under Iranian command throughout the entirety of Syria.”

In response to this, Javani said, “Iran has been present in Iraq and Syria at the invitation of the legitimate governments of these countries and sided with the regional nations based on the common interests of the countries. If anyone should leave the region, it would be the meddlesome US, which has done nothing but damaging the region during these years.”

Last week, Breitbart reported that “Iran reportedly rejected Russia’s demands that foreign troops, including Iranian troops, leave Syria when the ongoing civil war there ends, saying on Monday that Iranian soldiers will maintain its presence there for “as long as necessary.”

Last month, Iran Front Page said Javani was quoted as saying in Farsi that joint strikes carried out by the United States, England, and France on Syria were an attempt to prevent the completion of a fact-finding mission to determine the source of the chemical attacks in Syria.

“The US was worried that the final report of the mission would stand in stark contradiction with its claim about Syria chemical attack, depriving it of a good pretext to attack Syria,” Javani reportedly said. “Damascus had already prepared the ground for the visit of the fact-finding mission to Syria. The strikes disprove the false claim by the US about Syria’s chemical attack.”

He also said, “The move by the US and its allies- the UK and France- to carry out air strikes on Syria is illegitimate and a flagrant violation [of Syria’s sovereignty].”

Adelle Nazarian is a politics and national security reporter for Breitbart News. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.