Iran’s Army has renewed its commitment to protect the Islamic Republic, warning sworn enemies that it will never allow them to misuse the country. 

The Army issued the warning in a statement on Friday on the occasion of the 36^th anniversary of a counterattack — codenamed Operation Mersad (lit: Ambush) — against the anti-Iran terrorist cult Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MKO) in the western Iranian province of Kermanshah. Within three days, Iran’s military crippled the enemy forces which suffered over 4,800 casualties.

In its statement, the Army said it would continue to increase the Islamic establishment’s strength and dignity in the future by adhering to the wise guidelines of Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei.

The name of the Mersad operation is tied to the Iranian Armed Forces’ honor, glory and pride in the face of the cowardice of the MKO terrorists who sought to encroach on the country’s territory, it added.

The statement noted that the cowardly MKO terrorists carried out a desperate attack against Iran as they imagined that the country was suffering from weak military power after the end of eight years of Iraqi-imposed war.

However, it emphasized, that the Iranian Armed Forces succeeded in giving a crushing and firm response to the terror group so that it would never think about conducting any attack on the country.

On July 26, 1988, the MKO terror cult, a key ally of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime at the time, launched a blitz to overthrow the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The terror cult, now based in Albania, had joined forces with Saddam’s West-backed regime in its war against Iran in the early 1980s. In the waning days of the 8-year war, MKO carried out the offensive.

In response, Iran’s military carried out the Mersad operation, during which over 4,800 members of the terrorist group were killed or injured. The operation ended with the Iranian military forces’ decisive victory.

‘Traitors to Iran face no fate but displacement’

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kan’ani said on Friday that those who betrayed the Islamic Republic with the support of the Iranian nation’s enemies and attacked their homeland will face no destiny but displacement like what the MKO terrorists experienced in the Mersad operation.

In a post on his X account, Kan’ani added that the MKO terrorists have been displaced in Europe for many years and supported as a “political plaything” by the US, Israel and some European countries that claim to support human rights.

The MKO terrorists, exploited as a tool, have bloody hands and a disgraceful and criminal record, he emphasized.

In the years after the 1979 victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, these terrorists killed more than 17,000 Iranian citizens and finally took refuge in the arms of the former Iraqi criminal dictator, the Iranian spokesperson wrote.