DROP SITE NEWS: Ansarallah has inflicted heavy damage on energy infrastructure in western Saudi Arabia. If the war continues, do you also intend to target energy infrastructure in the region? GENERAL MOHSEN REZAEI: Iran does not have a policy of attacking civilian energy infrastructure to harm the regional economy. That is not our objective. But there is another side to this question. If energy infrastructure is used directly to sustain the war against Iran—whether by supporting military operations, replacing supplies lost because of the situation in the Strait of Hormuz, or enabling the economic blockade to continue—then the nature of that infrastructure changes in our strategic calculations. Vulnerability in the Persian Gulf is not one-sided. Iran’s oil facilities, ports, and shipping cannot be treated as legitimate targets while assuming that the other side’s economic infrastructure supporting this war will remain immune forever. Our preference is entirely clear: de-escalation. We have offered a political path to end the war. If that path is accepted, there is no reason for the region’s energy infrastructure to become part of a wider battlefield. But if the U.S. strategy is to prolong the war while using neighboring countries’ energy infrastructure to offset the pressure arising from Hormuz and maintain the blockade of Iran, those governments should not assume they can participate in economic warfare against Iran without putting themselves at risk. The message is not that Iran wants to destroy the Persian Gulf’s energy system. The message is that there can be no arrangement in which Iran’s economic lifelines come under attack while the economic architecture enabling those attacks is considered untouched and immune. That is precisely why we tell the countries of the region that the better alternative is a security arrangement in which energy facilities, shipping routes, and civilian infrastructure are mutually kept out of the war. This is possible, but it must work both ways. 🔗 Read our full exclusive interview with Iran’s top security official, Gen. Mohsen Rezaei, Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, below.