Iran warns Trump, ‘the gambler’: We will end this war
While Iran has continued to fire missiles at Israel, it has yet to take action against the United States itself, either by firing at U.S. bases or by targeting the 20% of global oil shipments that pass near its coast at the mouth of the Gulf, Reuters writes.
“Mr Trump, the gambler, you may start this war, but we will be the ones to end it,” Ebrahim Zolfaqari, spokesperson for Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya central military headquarters, said on Monday in English at the end of a recorded video statement.
As noted, Iran and Israel traded another wave of air and missile strikes on Monday as the world braced for Tehran’s response.
Trump’s administration has repeatedly said that its aim is solely to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, not to open a wider war.
Experts surveying commercial satellite imagery said it appeared that the U.S. attack had severely damaged the site of Iran’s Fordow nuclear plant, built inside a mountain, and possibly destroyed it and the uranium-enriching centrifuges it housed, although there was no independent confirmation.
Iran says more than 400 people have been killed in the Israeli attacks, mostly civilians, but has released few images of the damage since the initial days of the bombing. Tehran, a city of 10 million people, has largely emptied, with residents fleeing to the countryside to escape attacks. Iran’s retaliatory missile strikes on Israel have killed 24 people, all civilians, and injured hundreds, the first time a significant number of Iranian missiles have ever penetrated Israeli defenses.
Iran’s most effective threat to hurt the West would probably be to restrict global oil flows from the Gulf. Oil prices spiked on Monday at their highest since January. But they have not yet shot up to crisis levels.
Iran’s parliament has approved a move to close the Strait of Hormuz that leads into the Gulf, which would require approval from the Supreme National Security Council, a body led by an appointee of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Attempting to strangle the strait could send global oil prices skyrocketing, derail the world economy and invite conflict with the U.S. Navy’s massive Fifth Fleet that patrols the Gulf from its base in Bahrain.
“It’s economic suicide for them if they do it. And we retain options to deal with that,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said.
As Tehran weighed its options, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was expected to hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Monday. The Kremlin has a strategic partnership with Iran, but also close links with Israel.
