Iran warns the US that it “puts its troops in danger” if it sends them to Israel with the THAAD system

MADRID 13 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –

The Iranian Foreign Minister, Abbas Araqchi, warned the United States this Sunday that it would be putting its troops “in danger” if it sent them to Israel following published and unconfirmed information about the presence of US military personnel to manage the system. THAAD anti-aircraft.

“The United States has been sending a record number of weapons to Israel. Now it is putting the lives of its troops in danger by deploying them to man a US missile system in Israel,” Araqchi said in a message posted on his account on the social network

Araqchi has assured that “we have made a tremendous effort in recent days to contain an open war in our region, (but) I say clearly that we have no red lines when it comes to defending our people and their interests.”

The message is accompanied by a graph that reflects in dollars the military aid provided by the United States to Israel since 1960, with considerable peaks of up to 14 billion dollars (about 12.8 billion euros) per year weighted with its current value in the 1960s. 1970, coinciding with Israel’s wars with the Arab countries, but which now exceed 17.9 billion (16.36 billion euros), according to official data from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Between both peaks, the figure was more or less stable at around 4,000 million dollars (3,650 million euros) annually.

Israeli media have reported in recent hours, citing US sources, that Washington is studying the possibility of sending the advanced Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system to Israel to protect its ally in the event of a more powerful Iranian attack.

Israel has announced that it will respond to the attack on October 1, when Iran launched some 200 projectiles, including ballistic missiles, against Israeli territory and taking this Israeli response for granted, the United States is studying defensive formulas for the next wave of retaliation, for example with batteries missiles of the THAAD system.

An American official has confirmed to ‘The Times of Israel’ that they are studying the possible sending of THAAD, but that a decision has not yet been made on the matter.

A Congressional report from last April specifies that the United States has seven batteries of the THAAD defense system, considered complementary to the Patriot system, only with a longer range, between 150 and 200 kilometers. Each battery consists of six truck-mounted shuttles with 48 interceptors, radio and radar and requires 95 soldiers to operate.