Gen. Hossein Salami.

Iran would welcome war with the United States, said Brig. Gen. Hossein Salami, Lieutenant Commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards on Wednesday, mocking U.S. officials’ mention of a military option to combat Iran’s nuclear program.

In an interview with state-run television in Iran, Salami said, “We have prepared ourselves for the most dangerous scenarios and this is no big deal, and is simple to digest for us.” He claimed that Iran welcomed “war with the U.S., as we do believe that it will be the scene for our success to display the real potentials of our power.”

Salami was not the only Revolutionary Guards commander to belittle the possibility of a U.S. military strike against Iran. Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, commander of the Revolutionary Guards, also said talk of the military option was ridiculous.

In an address to a ceremony in the city of Semnan, Jafari said that, “The military option which the Westerners are constantly talking about is no more than a mockery, and they do know that if the military option against the Islamic Republic of Iran could yield results, they would use it time and again.”

Because of that, he said, “they have shifted their focus to other types of threat[s] and to the soft war front.”

The commanders’ remarks came following U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s recent statement that the U.S. is still considering the military option in confronting Iran’s contentious nuclear program.

In response, Salami claimed that the U.S. has only won wars against countries with “rotten” armies that couldn’t resist its “aggression,” adding that Washington should not compare such weak countries and armed forces with the Islamic Republic’s “powerful” forces.

Salami also commented on Iran’s military preparedness to confront a U.S. attack, claiming that Tehran would set fire to every military base from which U.S. planes would take off to bomb Iran. He said, “we warn their pilots that their first flight,” for a military strike against Iran, “will be their last one and no one will be allowed to go back safe and sound and they should call their flights as their last flight,” according to Fars.

The day before, Salami had also threatened that any “military aggression” against Iran would ignite a worldwide Muslim war against the U.S. and its global interests. Downplaying the possibility of U.S. military action, he told attendees at a ceremony in the Iranian holy city of Qom, “War against Iran will mobilize the Muslim world against the US, an issue which is very well known by the enemy.”

If the U.S. moved militarily against Iran, said Salami, Iran, “should use our different capacities to fight against the enemy, and the Islamic Iran has gained many experiences in fighting against the enemy so far.”