U.S. and Iranian leaders traded threats on Saturday as the interim deal to end the war buckled under crossfire in the Middle East and efforts continued to keep talks going.
President Donald Trump overnight made threats on social media of further missile attacks against Iran, after the funeral of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei saw open calls for the U.S. leader’s killing. Senior U.S. officials demanded that Iran make a public statement saying the Strait of Hormuz is open and ships won’t be attacked.
Later, Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei vowed that Iranians would continue to avenge his father’s death. Such revenge “is the will of our nation and must certainly be carried out,” he said in remarks carried by state television. He still has not been seen publicly since the war began on Feb. 28 with strikes that killed his father.
Tehran has insisted that the strait remain under its control and that it be allowed to charge ships moving through it, a stance it took after the war began.
The exchange of threats followed days of U.S. airstrikes targeting Iran, sparked by Iran’s attacks on three ships in the strait, and Iranian retaliatory fire targeting Arab nations in the region.
Trump has declared the ceasefire over but said the U.S. would continue negotiations. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Saturday traveled to Oman, located on the other side of the strait, for more talks, a day after Qatari mediators met with officials in Tehran.
Trump says he responded to threats to kill him
A thousand “missiles are Locked and Loaded and aimed at the Islamic Republic of Iran, with thousands more to immediately follow, should the Iranian Government act on its threat,” Trump wrote on his website.
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He said he was responding to threats “to assassinate, or attempt to assassinate” him. During Khamenei’s funeral, mourners held posters or banners calling for Trump to be killed along with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Iran buried Khamenei, 86, this week.
Trump added that the U.S. military would “completely decimate and destroy all areas of Iran — PRAISE BE TO ALLAH!”
Trump has repeatedly invoked the name of God in Arabic, and threatened to destroy Iran’s very civilization. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, an advocacy group, has criticized Trump’s “deranged mocking of Islam.”
Iran accuses Washington of violating the interim deal
Iran’s foreign minister accused the U.S. of violating the interim deal by ending waivers allowing Iran to sell crude oil on the open market in U.S. dollars. Washington ended them in response to the attacks on ships in the strait.
“Reality check: There can only be mutual compliance,” Araghchi wrote on X.
He was scheduled to meet with his counterpart in Oman. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told his country’s state broadcaster, TRT, that he believed “a solution can be reached” this weekend between Iran and Oman.
The U.S. urges mariners to travel through the strait on a southern route, through Oman’s territorial waters. Iran has said the strait must be under its sole control and that vessels should begin paying fees to Tehran. The world for decades has considered it an international waterway.
About a fifth of all traded oil and natural gas passed through it before the war began. Iran’s grip on the strait during the war led to a global energy crisis, though oil prices have sharply dropped since wartime highs of $120 a barrel.
Tehran’s diplomat at the United Nations said on Friday that any activity in the strait, including its opening or demining operations, “rests exclusively with Iran.”
US officials accuse hard-liners of trying to sabotage the deal
U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity about the current situation with Iran, said the resumption of strikes this week came after what they described as a rogue faction of Iranian hard-liners tried to sabotage the ceasefire.
However, Iran has insisted its theocracy is unified under the new supreme leader.
After the U.S. wrapped up its latest strikes on Thursday, more attacks reportedly hit Iran, raising questions about who else may be targeting the Islamic Republic.
Israel didn’t claim them, meaning the Gulf Arab states may have launched them, likely as a means to deter Iran from attacking them again. Iran on Thursday retaliated for U.S. strikes by targeting Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait and Qatar.
The strikes in Iran over two days killed at least 17 people and wounded 115 others, Iranian Health Ministry spokesperson Hossein Kermanpour said.
US says nuclear deal will require Iran to turn over enriched uranium
The U.S. officials told journalists the U.S. would never reach a nuclear deal with Iran if it does not first stop its attacks on ships in the strait.
They also said any deal on Iran’s nuclear program would require Tehran to turn over its stockpile of highly enriched uranium. That’s something Iran has repeatedly refused.
If the U.S. doesn’t reach a deal with Iran to turn over the material, it has military options to ensure that it remains buried underground forever, the officials said. They did not detail them.
The uranium, enriched to near weapons-grade levels, is believed to be at nuclear sites the U.S. bombed in 2025. Iran long has insisted its nuclear program is peaceful, though the International Atomic Energy Agency has said the Islamic Republic is the world’s only country to enrich uranium so highly without a weapons program.
2 idiots the world doesn’t need
Huh, why use the word supreme for Iran’s terrorist leader and just a name for President Trump?
Could you be so blinded by your own stupudity to seemibgly support terrorists because you are dumb retards?
Please drop a bomb on my head TRUMP!
Such a lovely Sunday here. After church i’m heading straight for the park to see if any little boys and girls want to play tag, but with their pants off. I like to grab their bum bums.
None of this conflict is about “freeing the people of tyranny” like capturing Maduro this is all about these 2 countries getting back to selling their oil using u.s. dollars which hasn’t happened in 9 years for Venz. and 18 years for Iran. The blowing up of supposed drug runner boats and “freeing the people” of Iran is just theater
You’ve killed Iran’s leaders, family, and children. Violence sown is violence reaped. You’ve involved America, which you’ve promised not to, in a never-ending war. You lied, Mr. President.
Good to see Lindsay Graham died.
One less GOP warmonger gone to hell without his money.
I guess I am next.
Tony Fuda (Peter Belinski) the Russian troll is back fundraising for Zelenski again.
Go Ukraine! “Tony” is a coward who won’t enlist.
Another trumper died. A Senator.
There goes his fragile majority.
The US should fight for freedom and democracy in its own country. It’s scores on world freedom and democracy indices are much lower than Canada.
America always fighting for freedom and democracy. Meanwhile Canada does nothing and caters to authoritarian despots.
The U.S. hasn’t won a single war since WWII and this war with Iran won’t be any different.
Now they’re fighting to open the Strait of Hormuz which had free unimpeded passage for everyone before the U.S. and Israel murdered Iran’s supreme leader and many others including the bombing of a school which killed 160 innocent girls.
The orange felon is as guilty of murder as anyone in Iran.
The latest non-supreme leader was probably killed months ago.
trump can’t beat Greenland’s walruses.
Glad I got an EV though.
Thanks Trump and MAGA for starting a no win war. The USA hasn’t learned from Afghanistan, Iraq and Vietnam. All the firepower in the world won’t defeat a determined insurgency.
Nobody cares about iranians, they’re a piece of turd hanging off a cockroachs azz
Drop MOAB bombs on the mourners, let them join their supreme leader
Everybody knows the new “supreme leader” is dead and being used as a puppet by the regime.
The regime would prefer to use a puppet leader because the new leader is a homosexual, and that is not a good look for Islam.
10000 missiles ready to decimate you pig fockers
Jake the snake, guess you are rich and/or like being controlled by terrorists who raise the price of everything. FU
so on the one hand, barely armed Iranians who object to the evil regime, should just magically overthrow a heavily armed military OR the whole country should be nuked into oblivion and get the ball rolling for counter strikes from Russia/China so we can all end up fried. Dumb options all around.
Don’t like trump but wish he would nuke that dump into oblivion
@Steven Tucker
“Trumps is a great USA President. Meanwhile Carney is spineless, flip flops daily and has nothing to show for in over a year.”
Let me fix that for you MAGA traitor.
Carney is a great Canadian PM. Meanwhile Trump is spineless, flip flops daily and has nothing to show for in over a year.
You can thank the Orange guy for showing Iran it had powers against the US it didn’t know before the failed Crusade.
Should have wiped Iran off the planet when they had the opportunity
Supreme swallower will soon be hell having sex with pigs
I’ll be done when all the woketurds and religious maggots are in hell
Trump is done come November, can’t eait
Turn iran into a radioactive wasteland
What would happen if another country wiped out the US president and his entourage on US soil. Between Maduro and Khameini being hit in their own country, much of the world accepts it as normalcy. When in reality, it was two oil rich countries that decided long ago to sell their natural resource avoiding the use of US dollars..It is the sole reason the US has interfered
Someone has to get Trump to quit posting to his social platform before he starts WWIII.
Someone needs to take away the tyrant’s toys, before someone in his party solves the problem directly.
Trumps is a great USA President. Meanwhile Carney is spineless, flip flops daily and has nothing to show for in over a year.
Send the supreme swallower to hell to join his dad