IRG ‘finger on the trigger’ as US ‘armada’ heads toward Middle East

 Iran’s Revolutionary Guard commander on Saturday said the country has its “finger on the trigger” at the U.S. after President Trump said an “armada” will head toward the Middle East.

“The Islamic Revolutionary Guard and dear Iran stand more ready than ever, finger on the trigger, to execute the orders and directives of the Commander-in-Chief,” Gen. Mohammad Pakpour said according to Nournews, a news outlet with ties to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.

Pakpour also warned the U.S. and Israel “to avoid any miscalculation.”

On Thursday, Trump told reporters on Air Force One that the U.S. is sending an “armada” to the region in response to Iranian troops cracking down on massive anti-government protests. The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency stated on Friday that over 5,100 Iranians have been killed as part of the crackdown.

Trump said he stopped Iran from executing 837 people, having previously warned the U.S. will take military action if people were killed. He urged demonstrators in Tehran to “take over” the country’s institutions in a Truth Social post, where he also announced that he called off meetings with Iranian officials.

“I said if you hang those people, you’re going to be hit harder than you’ve ever been hit,” Trump said Thursday. “They actually said they canceled it. They didn’t postpone it, they canceled it. So that was a good sign. But we have an armada. We have a massive fleet heading in that direction and maybe we won’t have to use it, we’ll see.”

So far, the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and three other destroyers headed west from the South China Sea earlier this week. A Navy official said the strike group reached the Indian Ocean on Friday.

The president previously said it was “time to look for new leadership” in Iran following weeks of protests. Trump told Politico that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was “guilty” of “the complete destruction of the country and the use of violence at levels never seen before.”

“In order to keep the country functioning, even though that function is a very low level, the leadership should focus on running his country properly, like I do with the United States, and not killing people by the thousands in order to keep control,” Trump said.

He called Khamenei “a sick man” who should “stop killing people.”

Khamenei has accused Trump and Israel of backing the protests, claiming they are a foreign plot to “devour Iran.” In one of a series of posts on the social platform X, the supreme leader wrote that Iran “extinguished the fire of the sedition, but that isn’t enough. The US must be held accountable.”

“We do not intend to lead the country toward war,” Khamenei wrote in another post. “However, we will not just let go of the criminals inside the country either. Worse than the internal criminals are the international criminals! We will not let go of them either.”

https://thehill.com/policy/international/5704676-iran-revolutionary-guard-threat/