Donald Trump threatens ‘obliteration’ as Iran condemns new US sanctions on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
- US president says any attack on ‘anything American’ will be met with ‘overwhelming force’
- Iran earlier said new sanctions had closed path to diplomatic solution between the two nations
US President Donald Trump threatened Iran with forceful retaliation for any attack on America after the Islamic Republic ruled out talks to resolve escalating tensions between the two nations.
“Any attack by Iran on anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force,” Trump said in a tweet on Tuesday. “In some areas, overwhelming will mean obliteration.”
Iran earlier said the path to a diplomatic solution with the US had closed after the Trump administration imposed sanctions against its supreme leader and other top officials, raising tensions days after the downing of an American drone brought the Middle East to the brink of war.
Trump’s comments came after some news outlets reported that Iran’s President Hassan Rowhani said that the Trump administration suffered from “mental retardation”.
A more precise translation from Farsi, however, would be: “The Americans have become confused and they do strange things. Things that no wise person in the history of politics has done. The White House has a mental disorder.”
“Iran’s very ignorant and insulting statement, put out today, only shows that they do not understand reality,” Trump tweeted.
Trump last week abruptly cancelled planned air strikes against Iran for shooting down the drone. The administration also blames Tehran for recent attacks on oil tankers near the Persian Gulf, which Iran denies.
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Tensions have spiked in the Gulf since May, when the Trump administration revoked waivers on the import of Iranian oil, squeezing its economy a year after the US walked away from the landmark 2015 deal meant to prevent the Islamic Republic from developing a nuclear weapon.
Since then, a spate of attacks on oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz shipping chokepoint have raised the spectre of war and pushed up oil prices.
“The futile sanctions against the Iranian leader and the country’s chief diplomat mean the permanent closure of the diplomatic path with the government of the United States,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi was quoted as saying by semi-official Iranian Students News Agency.
“The Trump government is in the process of destroying all the established international mechanisms for maintaining global peace and security.”
The new penalties are unlikely to have a significant impact on a country that is already in recession due to stringent US sanctions on its oil sector and has been largely shut out of the global financial system.
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The US has sanctioned more than 80 per cent of Iran’s economy, according to Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, who is in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates this week to rally a front against Iran.
The targeting of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for US sanctions on Monday shocked some Iranians because he is considered a spiritual guide and a holy man by his most devoted followers.
Trump has coupled his “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions with invitations to sit down with Iranian leaders.
In an interview that aired Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, the president said that he thinks Iranian leaders want to negotiate and he is willing to talk with no preconditions except that the outcome must be Iran acquiring no nuclear weapons.
His national security adviser, John Bolton, said on Tuesday that Iran had an “open door” to negotiations on a revised nuclear deal as he met Israeli and Russian officials for talks on the Iranian presence in Syria.
But he said that any talks would have to “completely and verifiably eliminate Iran’s nuclear weapons programme, its pursuit of ballistic missiles delivery systems, its support for international terrorism, and its other malign behaviour worldwide”.
