IRAN’S SEPT. 11 TAUNT

‘US falls like WTC’

A top Iranian official taunted the Trump administration with 9/11 imagery Saturday, making a cruel reference to the attacks on the 2001 World Trade Center.

“The [US political] system has an apparently huge body, but suffers from osteoporosis,” Revolutionary Guard head Gen. Hossein Salami told the Fars news agency. “In fact, the US is like [a]World Trade Building that collapses with a sudden hit.”

The remark came as tensions between Iran and the United States escalated.

But while Salami claimed the American system “has cracked and lost its strength,” Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif said his country is “not seeking war,” according to the state-run IRNA news agency.

Meanwhile, US diplomats warned that commercial airliners flying over the Persian Gulf are at risk of being “misidentified.”

The warning, issued due to “heightened military activities and increased political tension,” told pilots to brace for interference with navigation instruments or jamming of communications.

Employees of energy giant Exxon Mobil started evacuating an oil field in the southern province of Basra on Saturday, according to reports, and the gulf nation of Bahrain ordered all of its citizens in Iraq and Iran to return home.

That evacuation order followed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s Wednesday directive telling nonessential diplomatic staffers to leave the US Embassy in Baghdad and its consulate in Irbil.

Concerns about a possible conflict have flared since the White House ordered warships and bombers to the region to counter an alleged threat from Iran.

Despite saying he would “absolutely” send ground troops to the region if necessary, President Trump has recently tried to soften his tone. “What I’d like to see with Iran, I’d like to see them call me,” he said last week.