Teheran warns Washington against threats
TEHERAN — Iran on Wednesday warned the United States not to threaten it, after Washington said it decided on a response to an attack that killed three US troops in Jordan.
“America must stop using the language of threat and projection and focus on a political solution,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said, according to the official IRNA news agency.
“Iran’s response to threats is decisive and immediate,” he added.
Hossein Salami, chief commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, or IRGC, said on Wednesday that the country is not after war but not afraid of war either, vowing to let no threat go unanswered, according to the semiofficial Fars news agency.
He made the remarks at the closing ceremony of a national congress to commemorate the country’s martyrs in Teheran, also a reaction to some threats uttered by US officials against Iran over the past few days.
Salami said, “We are not warmongers, but they impose wars on us. Therefore, we defend our causes and do not let foreigners interfere in our internal issues.”
Amir-Abdollahian and Salami’s remarks came after US President Joe Biden linked Iran to the recent killing of three US soldiers at a military base in northeastern Jordan near Syria’s border. Biden said the United States “will hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner (of ) our choosing”.
Baseless accusation
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani on Monday rejected the country’s involvement in the drone attack targeting the US forces in Jordan, saying the accusation is “baseless and provocative”.
Still, the US on Wednesday attributed the drone attack to the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of Iran-backed militias, as Biden weighs his options to respond to the strike.
The US on Wednesday imposed sanctions on three entities and one individual in Lebanon and Turkiye for “providing critical financial support” to a financial network used by Iran’s Quds Force and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, the Treasury Department said.
The entities “have generated hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of revenue from selling Iranian commodities, including to the Syrian government”, the department said in a statement.
The killing of the US troops in a drone strike on Sunday marked the first US military losses since the conflict in Gaza broke out on Oct 7.
Iran has denied any links to the attack and said it was not seeking an “expansion” of conflict in the Middle East.
Regional tensions have intensified since the conflict in Gaza broke out, drawing in groups in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.