“The drone was moving towards Iran, breaching international regulations i.e. taking that route it was making a threat to Iran,” the Iranian official said.

“It had even turned off its identification system,” he added.

“We needed to take a tactical measure, accordingly,” he said.

“Our tactical measure has various aspects; first we issued a radio warning,” Khshghalb described, “In some cases, the warning is stronger and will lead into a strong tactical measure such as shooting.”

“On its route, which was longer than three hours, the drone, which was under our full surveillance, was seeking something,” he reiterated.

“May be we could take initial measures much earlier but we let the drone do its job and end its route,” he said, “We repeatedly issued warnings when the drone was on its way moving towards us asking it to act upon international regulations but it ignored all of them.”

On June 20, In June, Iran’s IRGC downed a US Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk spy drone after it had violated Iranian airspace. Despite the US claims that the drone had been flying over international waters, Iran said it had retrieved sections of the drone in its own territorial waters where it was shot down.

The intruding drone was shot by Iran’s homegrown air defense missile system “Khordad-3rd”.

US President Donald Trump said afterward that he aborted a military strike to retaliate against Iran’s downing of the US drone because it could have killed 150 people, and signaled he was open to talks with Tehran.

Chief of General Staff of Iranian Armed Force, Major General Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, said on Wednesday that the US was on the verge of attacking Iran but called off the plans after Iran downed the intruding drone.

“The US was to take a practical measure [military strike] against us but in the name of a high number of probable victims, it overturned the decision,” he said, adding, “The main reason, however, was Iran’s deterrence power.”

These are the result of the Iranian thought and the commands of the Revolution Leader, he said, noting that despite all problems, Iran enjoys great capabilities in the defense sector and the Iranian nation will not let eruption of another war.

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Jalali made the remarks Monday in a ceremony held to commemorate martyrs of Mersad operation; an operation in which MKO suffered a heavy defeat by Iranian forces at the end of the 8-year-long imposed war on Iran.

“Many of the comments [on social media] which are full of hatred, offense, and mockery is posted by fake accounts of this group,” he highlighted.

“They are trying to negatively affect the public opinion in Iran and cause disappointment among Iranians and induce inefficiency of the Islamic Republic,” the commander added.

Leaked images showed that the US-backed Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) terror group have launched social media campaigns against the Islamic Republic. Iran’s Khorasan newspaper in early July, revealed for the first time part of the organization’s secretive social media influence campaign targeting Farsi, English and Arabic-speaking users on social media, PressTV reported.

Members are “briefed at the start of their workday and start their social media operations at noon. At the end of the day, feedback is reviewed and issues that have to be used to defame the Islamic Republic are examined for the next day,” read the paper.

The MKO is listed as a terrorist organization by much of the international community. Its members fled Iran in 1986 for Iraq, where it enjoyed backing of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

The MKO has been banned in Iran and around the world for its role in numerous terrorist activities, especially in the early years after the Islamic Revolution in 1979, taking the lives of thousands of Iranians, along with foreign nationals.

Out of the nearly 17,000 Iranians killed in terrorist attacks since the victory of the Islamic Revolution, about 12,000 have fallen victim to MKO’s acts of terror.

Removing a decade-long ban on the MKO, the United States and its allies, however, have sought to use the group as a tool to pressure Iran over the past years.

The post Foreign social media, new den of MKO terrorists: cmdr. appeared first on Iran News Daily.

 Head of Iran’s Passive Defense Organization Brigadier General Gholamreza Jalali said that Europe cannot be trusted, adding the European countries side with the US in pressuring Iran.

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“Recently, some media outlets have published remarks by Brigadier General Gholamreza Jalali which were taken out of context with regard to the president’s mobile phone being tapped, which is strongly denied,” the statement read, Mehr reported on Tuesday.

It added that in the interview, General Jalali had warned that “unencrypted” phone calls made by the country’s officials while in other countries are vulnerable to being intercepted.

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“As the Leader of the [Islamic] Revolution said, ‘the option of war is the final threat which has been thwarted by Iran’s defense power’,” said Brigadier General Gholamreza Jalali during a press conference.

Jalali said a new wave of threats in non-military fields has been launched by the United States, first of which is the economic war.

He also said the first mission of the Passive Defense Organization is to watch out for threats, identify them and issue warnings in different fields.

The second mission of the organization is to decrease the vulnerability of the country’s infrastructure against national threats, he remarked.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Jalali pointed to the upcoming U.S. sanctions against Tehran, which will go into force on November 4, saying Washington’s anti-Iran sanctions have failed and its new sanctions will fail as well.

“Americans said earlier this year that a hot summer was underway,” he said, adding that false information by the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) terrorist group has led to the adoption of a wrong approach vis-a-vis Iran by the U.S.

He went on to say that the Islamic Republic is carrying out measures to strengthen its infrastructure against any type of threats.

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