Al Jazeera: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Iran\u2019s parliament speaker has accused the United States of plotting a ground attack despite publicly pushing for a negotiated deal, as the US deploys thousands of military personnel to the Middle East.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOur men are waiting for the arrival of the American soldiers on the ground to set them on fire and punish their regional allies once and for all,\u201d Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said in a statement on Sunday, carried by the official IRNA news agency, as Iran struggled with power cuts amid escalating Israeli attacks<\/a> on central and western areas of the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Iran\u2019s Ministry of Energy reported power outages in the capital, Tehran, its surrounding region and neighbouring Alborz province on Sunday, \u201cfollowing attacks on electricity industry facilities\u201d. The Fars news agency reported later that the outages were being resolved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was unclear whether the attacks were related to US President Donald Trump\u2019s threats to strike Iranian power stations and other energy infrastructure if Tehran did not agree to a deal to end the war. Trump extended his deadline by 10 days through April 6 as Washington presented a 15-point plan<\/a> for peace that critics described as \u201cmaximalist\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Al Jazeera\u2019s Ali Hashem, reporting from Tehran, said that authorities had activated substations to restore power. \u201cThis gives an indication of how much they\u2019ve been also preparing for such situations,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ghalibaf\u2019s comments on Iran\u2019s readiness for a ground assault came as The Washington Post reported that the Pentagon was preparing for weeks of limited ground operations in Iran, potentially including raids on Kharg Island<\/a>, a crude export hub, and coastal sites near the Strait of Hormuz<\/a> shipping chokepoint.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Al Jazeera: Iran\u2019s parliament speaker has accused the United States of plotting a ground attack despite publicly pushing for a negotiated deal, as the US deploys thousands of military personnel to the Middle East. \u201cOur men are waiting for the arrival of the American soldiers on the ground to set them on fire and punish their regional allies once and for all,\u201d Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said in a statement on Sunday, carried by the official IRNA news agency, as Iran struggled with power cuts amid escalating Israeli attacks on central and western areas of the country. Iran\u2019s Ministry of Energy reported power… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":55954,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55951"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55953,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55951\/revisions\/55953"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/55954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}