Iran Guards chief says Americans have started 'psychological war'

The United States has started a psychological war in the region, the commander of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards said in a parliament session on Sunday, according to a parliamentary spokesman qouted in a Reuters report.

The US military has sent forces, including an aircraft carrier and B-52 bombers, to the Middle East to counter what the Trump administration says are “clear indications” of threats from Iran to US forces there.

The USS Abraham Lincoln is replacing another carrier rotated out of the Gulf last month.

“Commander Salami, with attention to the situation in the region, presented an analysis that the Americans have started a psychological war because the comings and goings of their military is a normal matter,” the spokesman for the parliamentary leadership, Behrouz Nemati, said, summarising the Guards’ commander’s comments, according to parliament’s ICANA news site.

Major General Hossein Salami was appointed as head of the Guards last month.

Read: Iran may attack Israel if US standoff escalates – Israeli minister

Separately, a media court on Saturday suspended the weekly Seda (Voice), the semi-official news agency ISNA reported, after the reformist magazine published an issue that included articles warning about the possibility of war with the United States.

“At the Crossroads of War and Peace, have moderates lost or will they again save Iran from war?” the main headline on the front page read against a photograph of US Navy warships.

On social media, hardliners attacked the magazine as “Trump’s voice”, suggesting its warning about the danger of war amounted to a call for talks with the United States, the Islamic Republic’s arch enemy.

“At the height of America’s political, economic and media war against the Iranian nation, an Iranian publication supplements the enemy’s media operations inside the country,” the hardline-led news agency Fars wrote in a comment.

Iran has dismissed the US military build up as “psychological warfare” designed to intimidate it.

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