Iran threatens Trump with retaliation

VOL.AT - Vorarlberg Online Iran threatens Trump with retaliation 16 hours • 2 minutes reading time Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, threatened the United States on Monday with a severe blow if US President Donald Trump carried out his bombing threat. On Sunday, Trump threatened Iran with bombings and punitive tariffs if the government in Tehran failed to reach an agreement with Washington over its nuclear program. "If they don't reach an agreement, there will be bombs," Trump said in a telephone interview with NBC. "But there's a possibility that if they don't make a deal, I'll impose secondary tariffs, like I did four years ago," he added. Trump made the remarks after his Iranian counterpart rejected direct negotiations with the US government. However, Tehran has expressed openness to indirect negotiations. The US and Israel's hostility toward Iran has always existed, Khamenei said on Monday. "They are threatening us with an attack, which we consider unlikely. But if they do something bad, they will certainly face a severe retaliation." Aggressive mood between Tehran and Washington escalates Earlier this month, Trump threatened Iran with military consequences in a letter to Khamenei if there was no new nuclear agreement. "There are two ways to deal with Iran: militarily or make a deal," Trump wrote at the time. Iran, in turn, threatened the US with attacks on its military bases in the region if the US government carried out its own threat and attacked the Islamic Republic. "If the Americans attack the sanctity of Iran, the entire region will explode like a spark in an ammunition depot," Parliament Speaker Mohammad Qalibaf said late last week. "Their bases and those of their allies will not be safe." Tehran Denies Building Nuclear Weapons Western states have accused Iran of seeking to build nuclear weapons for years. Tehran denies this. However, the country has increased its production of enriched uranium in recent years. Iran's stockpiles of uranium enriched to up to 60 percent purity – close to the weapons-grade quality of around 90 percent – ​​have skyrocketed, as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) announced at the end of February. During his first term in office, US President Trump unilaterally withdrew from the Vienna nuclear agreement in 2018, which stipulates restrictions on the nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions. Since then, Tehran has also failed to comply with the conditions. As a result of the international sanctions, Iran is mired in the worst economic crisis in its history. According to observers, only direct negotiations between the oil-rich country and the Trump administration could lead to a lifting of sanctions and thus defuse the crisis. Tehran is also in political trouble. His Middle East policy has been shaken by the weakening of the self-proclaimed "Axis of Resistance" against arch-enemy Israel. Feedback geben