Iran's Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces says that if a new war against Iran is started, it will engulf everyone, Ilna reports

Iran's Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces says that if a new war against Iran is started, it will engulf everyone, Ilna reports.

Warnings of this kind from senior Iranian military figures are a recurring feature of the regional escalation cycle and historically sit in the deterrent-rhetoric category rather than constituting an operational signal; language about a conflict engulfing everyone has tended to appear at moments of heightened tension precisely because it raises the perceived cost of a first strike without committing the speaker to action. The distinction that has mattered in past episodes is between rhetoric carried by semi-official domestic agencies, which is largely aimed at internal and adversary audiences, and any accompanying movement of forces, airspace closures, or proxy activity, which is what has previously repriced crude, freight and war-risk insurance premia. The transmission channel on comparable occasions has run through the crude curve and tanker rates rather than through broader risk assets, with Hormuz transit risk the specific tail being priced. The official in question holds a coordinating rather than direct command role, which in prior instances has made such statements more political than operational in intent. The follow-ons worth noting are whether the remark is echoed or escalated by other branches of the security establishment and whether it coincides with any visible military or diplomatic movement; absent those, episodes of this kind have tended to fade from pricing within sessions.