President vows ‘official end of Iran’ if it provokes U.S.
President Donald Trump warned Iran not to threaten the U.S. or face ruinous consequences as tensions mount between Washington and Tehran.
“If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran,” Trump said Sunday in a tweet. “Never threaten the United States again!”
The U.S. hastened the deployment of an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf and withdrew some diplomatic personnel from Iraq in recent weeks after saying intelligence showed a growing threat toward U.S. forces or commercial shipping by Iran or its proxy forces in the Mideast.
On Sunday night, a rocket was fired into the Iraqi capital’s heavily fortified Green Zone, landing less than a mile from the U.S. Embassy, further stoking tensions. No casualties were reported in the apparent attack. The area is home to Iran-backed Shiite militias.
Trump has suggested he isn’t looking for a military confrontation, even as his advisers warn Iran against any provocation.
The commander of Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Gen. Hossein Salami, said his country isn’t looking for war but isn’t afraid of a confrontation, either. Recent incidents have “made the extent of the enemy’s strength clear,” he said, according to the semi-official Fars News Agency.
Trump has used tough rhetoric before, including threatening to rain “fire and fury” on North Korea in 2017 when Pyongyang was pursuing a series of nuclear and missile tests. Tensions eased when Trump and President Kim Jong Un agreed to meet, but after two summits, progress on denuclearizing the country hasn’t materialized.
In January, before the recent uptick in tensions, Trump said his own intelligence experts “seem to be extremely passive and naive when it comes to the dangers of Iran. They are wrong!”
Fears of armed conflict were already running high after the White House ordered warships and bombers to the region earlier this month to counter an alleged, unexplained threat from Iran. The U.S. also has ordered nonessential staff out of its diplomatic posts in Iraq.
As tensions escalate between the U.S. and Iran, there have been concerns that Baghdad could once again get caught in the middle, just as it is on the path to recovery. The country hosts more than 5,000 U.S. troops, and is home to powerful Iranian-backed militias, some of whom want those U.S. forces to leave.
The U.S. Navy said Sunday it had conducted exercises in the Arabian Sea with the aircraft carrier strike group ordered to the region to counter the unspecified threat from Iran. The Navy said the exercises and training were conducted Friday and Saturday with the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group in coordination with the U.S. Marine Corps, highlighting U.S. “lethality and agility to respond to threat,” as well as to deter conflict and preserve U.S. strategic interests.
Also Sunday, Saudi Arabia warned that it does not want war but will not hesitate to defend itself against Iran, a top Saudi diplomat said. The comment came, after the kingdom’s energy sector was targeted this past week amid heightened tensions in the Persian Gulf.
Adel al-Jubeir, the minister of state for foreign affairs, spoke a week after four oil tankers — two of them Saudi — were targeted in an alleged act of sabotage off the coast of the United Arab Emirates and days after Iran-allied Yemeni rebels claimed a drone attack on a Saudi oil pipeline.
“The kingdom of Saudi Arabia does not want war in the region and does not strive for that … but at the same time, if the other side chooses war, the kingdom will fight this with all force and determination and it will defend itself, its citizens and its interests,” al-Jubeir told reporters.
Energy ministers from OPEC and its allies, including major producers Saudi Arabia and Russia, are meeting in Saudi Arabia on Sunday to discuss energy prices and production cuts. Iran’s oil exports are expected to shrink further in the coming months after the U.S. stopped renewing waivers that allowed it to continue selling to some countries.
OPEC and non-OPEC oil producers have production cuts in place, but the group of exporters is not expected to make its decision on output until late June, when they meet again in Vienna.