United States President Donald Trump threatened on Tuesday to obliterate parts of Iran if it attacked “anything American” after Tehran said the latest US sanctions had scuttled any chance of diplomacy, calling White House actions “mentally retarded”.
Trump on Monday signed an executive order imposing sanctions against Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior figures, with punitive measures against Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif expected later this week.
The moves came after Iran shot down a US drone on June 20 and Trump called off a retaliatory air strike minutes before impact, saying too many people would have been killed. According to Reuters, it would have been the first time the United States had bombed the Islamic Republic in four decades of mutual hostility.
On Tuesday, however, Trump tweeted: “Any attack by Iran on anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force. In some areas, overwhelming will mean obliteration.”
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Shortly before, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said imposing “useless sanctions” on Khamenei and Zarif would mark “the permanent closure of the path of diplomacy.
He added in a tweet: “Trump’s desperate administration is destroying the established international mechanisms for maintaining world peace and security.”
In a televised address on Tuesday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said the new sanctions against Khamenei would have no practical impact because the top cleric had no assets abroad.
Rouhani, a pragmatist who won two elections on promises to open Iran up to the world, said the White House’s actions were “mentally retarded” – an insult that other Iranian officials have used in the past about Trump, but a departure from Rouhani’s own comparatively measured tone over the years.
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