On Monday, hundreds of thousands of Iranians held nation-wide rallies to mark the 40th anniversary of the fall of the Shah and the triumph of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Shiite cleric who led an Islamic Revolution that rattles the West to this day.
Tehran’s military forces will “firmly punish” aggressors who attack Iran, the IRNA news agency reported on Monday, citing an Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) spokesman.
“Islamic Iran has reached a level to protect its borders by effective military capabilities, and firmly punish any aggressor,” Brigadier General Ramezan Sharif, spokesman for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) said during a rally celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Islamic revolution.
The comment comes as, on the same day, a massive nation-wide rally marking the 40th anniversary of the fall of the shah and the triumph of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini took place.
On 11 February 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei came to power in Iran, replacing Shah Mohammad-Reza Pahlavi’s Western-backed government, turning the country into an Islamic Republic. It is not widely acknowledged that the British government played a crucial role in supporting the leader for years before and after the Islamic Revolution.