Iran’s IRGC says it is identifying new targets and planning operations in new geographical areas, warning a future war would have no limits
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps says it has begun identifying new targets and planning operations in new geographical theatres after Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei ordered an immediate, geographically unrestricted response to any new attack, as Iranian officials warn a future war could last longer than the last one.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said on Sunday, 1 November 2026, that it is identifying new targets and planning operations in new geographical areas, in the sharpest statement yet of how Tehran says it would respond if the United States or Israel attack again. The remarks, carried by Iran’s state-run Tasnim news agency and reported by Al Jazeera, Turkiye Today, Kurdistan24 and Al Mayadeen, put an operational edge on a warning issued a day earlier by Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei.
IRGC spokesman Brigadier General Hossein Mohebbi said the supreme leader’s recent directives had “opened a new chapter” for Iran in any future war. “In a conflict with the United States, there are no geographical limitations,” he said, according to Tasnim. “A vast theatre has been defined for inflicting damage upon the enemy and achieving maximum deterrence.” He added that the IRGC had engaged in “an identification process for new targets and the planning of operations for new geographical theatres”.
Crucially, Mohebbi named no target and no area. The statement therefore reads as a deliberate signal rather than a disclosed battle plan: Iran is telling Washington, Israel and the region that its retaliation list is being widened, without saying where it would strike first. That ambiguity is itself part of the message, because it forces every government that hosts United States forces or facilities in the region to consider whether it could be drawn in.
The IRGC statement follows Khamenei’s meeting with senior military commanders on Saturday, in which, according to Iranian state media and Reuters, he ordered the armed forces to respond immediately and forcefully to any kind or level of threat, with no geographical restrictions. He also said that if Iran’s enemies resumed military or what Tehran calls terrorist attacks, it would be Iran’s armed forces and people who determined when and on what conditions the fighting ended — not those who started it.
Other Iranian officials used the same language on Sunday. Iranian army spokesman Mohammad Akraminia, quoted by Iranian state television, said any new war with the United States could last longer than the previous conflict and that the American president would not be in a position to dictate the timing or the conditions of its conclusion. Defence Minister Mehrdad Akhlaghi warned of a “proportionate, decisive and impactful response” to any attack, adding that those who posed threats would not dictate the scope, timing or consequences of Iran’s defensive response.
The warnings come against a confrontation that has never fully ended. The war began on 28 February 2026 with joint United States and Israeli strikes on Iran, followed by Iranian retaliation against, among others, Gulf states allied with Washington. About 40 days of heavy military action followed, tapering into sporadic tit-for-tat strikes. United States and Israeli strikes have been paused since 1 September, but the threats have sharpened again in recent days as Washington weighs its next move.
On the American side, the position remains deliberately unresolved. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Saturday that President Donald Trump had not made a decision on new strikes, while Trump himself said the United States still had to “take care of” one or two remaining Iranian targets, including a suspected nuclear site at Pickaxe Mountain, and that it could do so in ten minutes. CNN reported last week that United States forces in the Middle East could launch major operations within 96 hours of an order, and Gulf officials have said Washington has told them strikes could come as early as 4 November, the day after the United States midterm elections.
Diplomacy has not stopped. Iranian envoys have been holding talks in Doha with Qatari mediators, following a Qatari visit to Tehran, in an effort to revive a ceasefire arrangement, and Iranian officials have said a plan could reopen the Strait of Hormuz within two days if the United States meets its conditions. At the Manama Dialogue in Bahrain, Gulf governments pressed Tehran to engage meaningfully, while the United Arab Emirates said it hoped for a breakthrough but was “braced for the worst”.
What happens next therefore turns on two separate clocks. One is political: whether the Doha channel produces enough movement to hold off a decision in Washington until after the midterms, and whether Tehran’s widened target language is read in Washington as deterrence or as provocation. The other is military: whether either side’s preparations — the IRGC’s new-targets process on one side, and the reported American readiness to act within days of an order on the other — harden into a timetable that diplomacy cannot reverse.
For now, the one firm fact is the statement itself. Iran has publicly committed to a response without stated geographical limits, to a longer war if one comes, and to deciding its own end point. Whether that language deters a new round of fighting or makes it harder to avoid will become clearer in the days after Tuesday’s American vote, when the decision Trump has so far deferred can no longer be put off in the same way.
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