The Revolutionary Guard has been ordered to build the capability to operate on enemy soil far from Iran's borders, Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naghdi told Iranian state television on Tuesday 11 August. Naghdi is a senior adviser to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iran's ideological Army, separate from the regular armed forces and answerable to the Supreme Leader rather than to the elected government. He said: "We need to be able to move the operations to the enemy's soil, whenever this is needed and ordered"12.
Treat that as a claim by one named officer, because that is all it is. Al Jazeera carried the same quote from the same broadcast on Wednesday 12 August, which corroborates what Naghdi said and nothing about what the Guard can do3. He gave no unit, no timescale and no capability detail. His other assertions to Mehr the same day, that Iran now makes all its own weapons and can sustain the war for years, carry no second source at all4.
Iran's strikes in this war have landed on American assets and energy infrastructure in Gulf states and Jordan, up to and including the salvo on Azraq, the Jordanian air base that hosts US forces, on the evening of Wednesday 29 July. Nothing has landed further out. An announced intention costs Tehran nothing; a demonstrated ability would reprice every embassy, base and refinery beyond the region.
