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According to unidentified officials, a US media report said Iran planned to assassinate the US ambassador to the Republic of South Africa before the November presidential election.
“According to press reports, Iran may plan an assassination or other attack against the United States in retaliation for the murder of terrorist leader Soleimani,” Trump wrote on Twitter.
“Any attack by Iran on the United States in any form will be countered by an attack on Iran that will be a thousand times greater,” he said.
Relations between Washington and Tehran have been strained since the 1979 Iranian revolution. Tensions have risen sharply since Trump unilaterally withdrew from a major international deal with Iran over its nuclear program in May 2018.
Washington is pressuring the international community to extend the arms embargo on Iran, which is due to end gradually in October, and return United Nations sanctions to the Islamic Republic.
General Q. Soleimani, who was in charge of the elite Kuds (Jerusalem) forces of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard responsible for Tehran’s operations abroad, was killed in January during a US drone strike in Baghdad.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday declined to comment directly on reports of a threat to US Ambassador PAR Lana Marks, a close Trump ally.
But Pompeo told Fox that Iran had “killed people in Europe and around the world.”
“We take these allegations seriously,” he added.
A spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry said Monday that the report of the assassination was unfounded, adding that it was part of “repeated rotten methods of creating an atmosphere hostile to Iran on the international stage.”
The Iranian navy announced last week that it had destroyed a US plane flying near an area where military exercises were taking place near the Strait of Hormones. According to the military, three US planes that flew into Iran’s air defense identification zone were detected by the radars of the country’s air force.
Iran warns US not to make ‘strategic mistake’
“We hope that they will not make a new strategic mistake. Of course, in case of any strategic mistake, they will face a decisive response from Iran,” Iranian government spokesman Ali Rabiei told a televised press conference.
Rabiei expressed regret that “the president of a country that aspires to rule and rule the world is making such hasty, hasty, questionable and doubtful comments.”
A government spokesman warned that the response “would accomplish nothing more than disturbing peace in the region and the world” and advised Trump “to refrain from a new adventurism … in his quest to win a new presidency.”
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