The commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari directed threats at Saudi Arabia yesterday in response to Riyadh’s declaration that the Lebanese Hezbollah which is backed by Iran is a terrorist organisation.

At the first Revolutionary Guards’ leaders meeting held during the current Iranian year that started recently, Jafari said that his forces “have prepared plans and projects to respond” to Saudi Arabia and are “waiting for commands” to implement them. He stressed that Tehran would defend Hezbollah with all its power in order to “strengthen its position in Lebanon and the region”.

At a time when the region anticipates an end to the war in Yemen, Jafari said that his country “will not leave the Yemeni people alone” and “that the sword of the Ansar Allah group (the Houthis) will be sharper”.

The commander of the Revolutionary Guards also defended the idea of “exporting” the Iranian revolution abroad and stressed the importance of “engineering” the revolution and expanding its domain in the international field.

Jafari tried to justify his country’s position and its military intervention in Syria, and pointed out that the participation of Iranian forces in the war in Syria came in response to “the British, American and Zionist strategy to divide Syria”.

At a domestic level, Jafari continued to attack the policies of the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and his government, a day after Rouhani defended the nuclear deal and its achievements for Iran. In response to Rouhani’s comments, Jafari said that considering the nuclear agreement to be a “model” is a form of “humiliation” and that those who defend the continuation of these deals are “involuntarily taking the road to counter-revolution and want to humiliate our great people”. Rouhani has been widely attacked by the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei for talking about internal agreements along the lines of the nuclear deal and the discussions that preceded it.