Tehran, Iran – Iran’s armed forces say they are ready to fire on US warships as President Donald Trump said Washington was still considering further attacks or continued pressure on Iran.
Trump told supporters at a rally in Florida on Friday that the U.S. military “could commit another epic fury,” referring to the massive bombing campaign against Iran early in the war. He had previously questioned whether to end the conflict quickly with massive attacks on Iran or allow pressure on Tehran to persist through a naval blockade and sanctions.
Recommended Stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
But Ali Abdollahi, chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, said the U.S. Navy is unable to enter Iranian territorial waters or its periphery because of Iran’s ability to target any vessel in the region.
“The US president can only dream that his soldiers and army will once again enter the Persian Gulf. They will take this wish to the grave for good,” he said in a statement carried by state media on Saturday morning.
Abdollahi also said that U.S. rhetoric on the war revealed a fundamental contradiction: U.S. claims that Iran’s military capabilities had been largely destroyed during the war were invalidated by its refusal to move its aircraft carriers and support ships closer to Iranian territory.
He added that Iranian forces were determined to “drown” the United States and Israel in a “quagmire” in retaliation for their surprise attack on Iran on February 28, triggering an eight-month war and plunging the entire region into instability.
Strait of Hormuz
Ships in and around the Strait of Hormuz continue to be attacked by Iran. Combined with increased risks of a resumption of war, this has driven up oil prices and propelled the price of Brent crude to its highest level since April, at around $117.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said seven oil tankers were attacked or hit by mines overnight Thursday. He then said on Friday that two supertankers had hit mines. The IRGC has said its military doctrine is now more offensive, and Washington has reportedly ordered many diplomats to leave Saudi Arabia, while others are expected to leave other countries in the region.
The Houthis, Iran’s allies in Yemen, also continued to trade attacks with Saudi Arabia, striking Riyadh again on Saturday, with Dammam International Airport and the Shaybah oil field targeted in recent days. Saudi forces bombarded Marib, Taiz and several other Houthi-controlled Yemeni provinces.
In southern Lebanon, on Friday, new Israeli air attacks around Nabatieh and artillery fire near Zawtar ash-Sharqiyah were reported. Iran has linked this front to its war with the United States and Israel, demanding in the past that any ceasefire with Washington also cover Lebanon.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, facing elections on October 27, days before the November 3 midterm elections in the United States, also ordered a lockdown of the occupied West Bank after a Palestinian attack killed two soldiers in Hebron. The Houthis have also launched attacks on Israel linked to events in Gaza and the West Bank, underscoring how broader regional peace now depends on events in multiple theaters, including in Lebanon, the occupied West Bank and Gaza.
Netanyahu reiterated his desire to overthrow the Iranian government, leading several media outlets and analysts linked to the Iranian state to claim that Tehran had activated the “dead hand” doctrine. This would allegedly allow continued military attacks against US, Israeli and regional interests across the country’s 31 provinces if senior Iranian officials were again assassinated as at the start of the war.
The IRGC threatened the Internet and seabed communications cables if Iran’s civilian infrastructure was targeted again by the United States and Israel. U.S. company Axios on Saturday cited U.S. intelligence as saying Iranian authorities had “significantly increased” their efforts to strike U.S. officials in the Middle East and beyond.
Diplomacy in Istanbul
The high-profile negotiations between Iran and the United States are not likely to yield results. But regional and European powers held a coordination meeting in Istanbul on Friday and announced their expectations for the future of the war.
Senior diplomats from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Egypt met with the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy, without the participation of the United States or Iran.
“We agree that a new attack on Iran would widen the war and spread the conflict throughout the region,” Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said after the meeting. “Military intervention in Iran is in no way a solution. Nobody approves of it at this stage.”
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said his government held Iran and the Houthis responsible for instability in the Middle East.
But the foreign ministers of the four regional countries issued a joint statement saying that “the Israeli occupation was the main source of instability in the region and beyond.”
As part of the resolution of the US-Israeli war against Iran, the four regional countries supported the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding signed in June and a negotiated settlement, while demanding unrestricted passage through the Strait of Hormuz. The group said it opposed attacks on civilians and commercial ships and condemned Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia and its maritime interests in the Red Sea.
The Istanbul meeting once again showed a “gap between diplomatic assertions and realities on the ground,” argued Nour News, a media outlet affiliated with Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, in an analysis Saturday.
He said U.S. and European powers — not Iran — must make concessions first. The media presented the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz as conditional on the United States accepting Tehran’s demands and recognizing its responsibility for the attack on Iran and Yemen.
Most Iranian newspapers on Saturday focused on signs of war, including rising oil prices.
The hard-line title Vatan-e Emrooz reported that the rise in the price of a barrel of Brent above $117 was “proof of shame for Trump.” Reformer Etemad said U.S. and Israeli actions signaled that “zero hour” of another intense round of war was approaching.
Reza Nasri, a Tehran-based foreign policy analyst with ties to the Foreign Ministry, said that after decades of attacks, nuclear sabotage, sanctions and broken agreements by the United States, Iran’s strategy was now “enough is enough.”
“Iran has delivered its verdict. It will no longer negotiate under bombardment, honor agreements that the other side considers optional, or accept the killing of its children and the scarcity of its people as routine political instruments,” he wrote on X. “It will end this cycle, and it will do so by any means necessary.”
Gn usa
