Iran-Trump latest: Tehran threatens regional war after president says ‘serious talks’ taking place with US – UK Times

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that if the U.S. attacked Iran, it would become a regional conflict, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported on Sunday.

“America should know that if it starts a war, this time it will be a regional war. These threats are nothing new. In the past as well, American officials repeatedly talked about war and said that all options were on the table including war.”

He added: “We are not the ones who start a war and we do not want to attack any country, but if America attacks or harms Iran the Iranian nation will deliver a strong blow and any war started by America will spread across the region.”

Amid escalating tensions with the US, Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian told his Egyptian counterpart yesterday that Tehran in “no way” seeks war with Washington.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran has never sought, and in no way seeks, war, and it is firmly convinced that a war would be in the interest of neither Iran, nor the United States, nor the region,” he said.

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, also warned that military action against Iran could destabilise the entire Middle East region, and has offered to act as a “facilitator” between Iran and the US.

Iran’s parliament speaker said today that the Islamic Republic now considers all European Union militaries to be terrorist groups.

The speaker’s comments come after Europe declared Tehran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard a terror group over its deadly crackdown on nationwide protests.

“By seeking to strike at the (Guard), which itself has been the greatest barrier to the spread of terrorism to Europe, Europeans have in fact shot themselves in the foot and, once again through blind obedience to the Americans, decided against the interests of their own people,” the speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf said.

Multiple reports suggest the US has built up a fleet of about 10 warships in and around the Middle East, including air craft carriers and navy destroyers.

The fleet is headed by the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72), which has been deployed towards the Middle East.

It also includes the guided-missile destroyer USS Delbert D. Black (DDG-119) positioned near the Red Sea, along with three other destroyers and three littoral combat ships.

The carriers host stealth aircraft, including Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II fighter jets and Boeing’s F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets.

Trump said last week that the US fleet was “ready, willing, and able to rapidly fulfil its mission, with speed and violence, if necessary”.

Asked by reporters aboard Air Force One for an update on what he plans to do with Iran, the American president refused to give away specifics, but added that “very big powerful ships” were heading towards the Gulf.

“I certainly can’t tell you that, but we do have very powerful ships heading in that direction,” Trump said.

“But I hope they negotiate something that is acceptable,” he added.

Iran’s army chief Amir Hatami warned Israel and the US against attacking Tehran following Washington’s deployment of its fleets in the Gulf.

“If the enemy makes a mistake, without a doubt it will endanger its own security, the security of the region, and the security of the Zionist regime,” Hatami said, according to Iran’s state news agency IRNA.

The army chief said Iran’s forces were “at full defensive and military readiness”.

A top Iranian national security official said in a post on X that negotiations with the United States are progressing even as tensions rise in the Middle East amid a buildup of American forces in the Gulf.

“Contrary to the hype of the contrived media war, structural arrangements for negotiations are progressing,” said Ali Larijani, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, without providing further details about the nature of the framework.

US president Donald Trump has also suggested Iran is negotiating with Washington.

“[Iran is] talking to us, and we’ll see if we can do something; otherwise, we’ll see what happens… We have a big fleet heading out there,” Trump told Fox News.