Iran parliament speaker warns severe retaliation against US ground invasion

Iran warns of severe retaliation against US ground forces as conflict escalates, with experts cautioning long-term global economic fallout from damaged energy infrastructure

Iranian forces "are waiting for the arrival of American troops on the ground to set them on fire and punish their regional partners forever," Iran parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf said Sunday. 

"Our firing continues. Our missiles are in place. Our determination and faith have increased," Qalibaf said. 

He warned the US against a ground invasion, threatening severe retaliation against American troops and allies in the region if US forces alight on Iranian soil, according to Iran official media. 

He described the US' 15-point plan which Pakistan passed to Iran last week as "their wishes" and said the Trump administration is attempting to gain through the plan what it has failed to achieve by force. 

 

"As long as the Americans seek Iran's surrender, our response is clear: Far be it from us to accept humiliation," he said. 

Economic ramifications to be long-lived: Experts  The US-Israel attacks on Iran have driven up prices, darkened the outlook for the world economy, sent global stock markets reeling and forced developing countries to ration fuel and subsidise energy costs to protect their poorest. 

Ongoing strikes and counter-strikes on Persian Gulf refineries, pipelines, gas fields and tanker terminals threaten to the prolong the global economic pain for months, even years. 

"A week ago or certainly two weeks ago, I would have said: If the war stopped that day, the long-term implications would be pretty small,'' said Christopher Knittel, an energy economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "But what we're seeing is infrastructure actually being destroyed, which means the ramifications of this war are going to be long-lived.''