Iran has warned that any renewed American attack will be met with "long and painful strikes" on United States positions across the Gulf region, as senior Iranian commanders and diplomats issued a fresh round of threats on Sunday and President Donald Trump said new strikes were "highly unlikely".
A senior official of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said any new American attack on Iran, even a limited one, would bring a long and painful response against its regional positions. Iranian media quoted the aerospace force commander, Majid Mousavi, as saying: "We've seen what happened to your regional bases, we will see the same thing happen to your warships." The warning was carried by Al Jazeera on Sunday evening.
Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, issued an ultimatum of his own, warning that Tehran would "rain down hell" if the United States resumed attacks. He said Iran's two-day proposal still stood, telling Washington to meet the requirements, including an end to the war on all fronts, and it would see results — or choose war, and see Iran's "alert and battle-hardened warriors rain down hell". An adviser to the commander of the Revolutionary Guard's aerospace force echoed the warning, saying Iran's armed forces were at the ready and that any mistake by the enemy would bring a "devastating and severe" response.
The threats came as Iran restated its claim to the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which about a fifth of the world's oil and gas supplies normally pass. Two months into the war between the United States and Israel and Iran, the strait remains closed, choking off that trade. A ceasefire has been in place since April 8, but Iran continues to block the strait in response to an American naval blockade of its ports, which has cut off Tehran's oil exports — its economic lifeline.
Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei said in a written message to Iranians that the "enemies' abuses of the waterway" would be eliminated under the new management of the strait, indicating that Tehran intended to maintain its hold over it. The foreign ministry spokesman, Esmaeil Baghaei, defended the closure of the strait, while Pakistan-led efforts to resolve the conflict have hit an impasse.
The Revolutionary Guard's spokesman, Brigadier General Hossein Mohebi, warned separately on Sunday that Iran would hit back harder if the United States attacked Iranian vessels in regional waters. "Naturally, in a war, they might hit one of our vessels. But we'll hit harder," he told the Fars news agency. He was reacting to the American military's newly announced plan to disrupt Iran's land-based supply routes under its so-called "Iron Gate" campaign, which he said could never achieve the economic blockade Washington was seeking, whatever form it took.
The Guard also signalled a significant change in its missile doctrine. Its spokesman, General Hossein Mohebbi, said on Saturday that the organisation would no longer adhere to a 2,000-kilometre limit on its ballistic missiles, and that it was prepared to "demonstrate these capabilities in practice" rather than simply talk about them. The statement followed a declaration last week attributed to the Supreme Leader, warning that any kind and level of threat from the United States or Israel would be met with a response "without geographic limits". Last March, Iran fired two missiles at the joint United States-British military base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, about 4,000 kilometres from Iran — the only reported instance of Iran firing missiles with a range beyond 2,000 kilometres.
In Washington, the tone was different. President Trump said on Sunday that renewed strikes on Iran were "highly unlikely", while noting that American forces had three aircraft carriers stationed in the region. The American publication Axios reported, quoting sources, that Trump had received a briefing from officials on Thursday on plans for a series of further military strikes intended to pressure Iran into negotiating an end to the conflict. NBC News reported separately on Saturday that Trump was considering the possibility of resuming military action against Iran.
The exchange of warnings comes as a deadline approaches in Washington. Friday is the deadline for Congress to approve the war, although a senior administration official said late on Thursday that, for the purposes of the resolution, hostilities had ceased with the start of the April ceasefire between Tehran and Washington, effectively resetting the clock. The United States Central Command, which Iran has designated a terrorist organisation, announced on Saturday that it was moving forward with Task Force Iron Gate, a plan to restrict Iran's ability to move materials through overland routes in neighbouring countries and across the Caspian Sea. The command estimates that its naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz has already halted roughly 25 billion dollars' worth of Iranian crude oil exports.
The Revolutionary Guard said on Sunday that three "rogue oil tankers travelling an unauthorised route" in the Strait of Hormuz had been hit by explosions and severe fires, the latest in a series of incidents around the waterway that have kept shipping on edge. Rear Admiral Mohsen Razzaqi, commander of Iran's Northern Fleet and Fourth Naval Zone, said coordination among the branches of the country's armed forces was at "their highest level", and that Iran's naval forces were defending the country's maritime borders around the clock. "The cost of any aggression against Iran must be raised to such an extent that the enemy will no longer dare attack the country again," he said, according to the IRNA news agency.
What happens next is likely to turn on whether the diplomacy can move before the military pressure does. Iran has tied the reopening of the strait to its conditions, including an end to the blockade, and has submitted a nuclear proposal to Washington through Qatari mediators, while the United States has expanded its blockade to land routes and is weighing further strikes. The warnings from Tehran on Sunday were designed to raise the price of any new attack; the statements from Washington suggested the president was, for now, leaning against one. With a congressional deadline days away and both sides talking about what their forces can do next, the standoff around the strait — and the oil trade that depends on it — remains unresolved.
