Iran promises harsh response to any attack, as Trump says

Tehran, Iran — Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Tuesday vowed a tough response to any attack, apparently in response to a warning the day before from President Trump about Iran’s alleged attempts to rebuild its nuclear program.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran’s response to any cruel aggression will be harsh and disheartening,” Pezeshkian said in a social media post.

Pezeshkian did not elaborate, but his statement came a day after Trump suggested that the United States could carry out new military strikes if Iran tries to reconstitute its nuclear program.

Trump made the comment during a wide talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the American leader’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

“Now I hear that Iran is trying to rebuild again,” Trump said during a news conference with Netanyahu after their meeting. “And if they are, we’re going to have to tear them down. We’ll tear them down. We’ll tear them down. But let’s hope that’s not happening.”

The two leaders discussed the possibility of renewed military action against Tehran months after a 12-day air war in June that killed nearly 1,100 Iranians, including top military commanders and scientists. Iran’s retaliatory missile strike killed 28 people in Israel.

Trump repeatedly declared the “total elimination” of Iran’s nuclear program after three sites were bombed in a secret strike by the United States in June, but questions arose about the magnitude of the damage caused. A initial classified evaluation determined that the attacks had set back Tehran’s nuclear program in a matter of months, while Trump said it had been set back “basically decades.”

Some Democratic lawmakers, after a classified briefing on the attacks, argued that Trump had misled the American people about the level of success achieved.

Trump suggested Monday that he could order another U.S. strike on Iran if he deems it necessary.

“If confirmed, you know the consequences, and the consequences will be very powerful, maybe more powerful than last time,” Trump said.

Trump said he had heard that Iran was rebuilding its capabilities after his closed-door meeting on Monday with Netanyahu, who has pressured successive US administrations for decades to take a tougher line against Iran.

“Netanyahu remains focused on reducing Iran’s threats to Israel, which he has been doing for nearly 30 years in office,” Samantha Vinograd, a News themezone national security contributor and former senior Homeland Security official in the Obama administration, said Tuesday.

But Vinograd added that “the United States and Israel may have different intelligence assessments about what Iran’s intentions are and what its capabilities are.”

He said U.S. attacks over the summer, known as Operation Midnight Hammer, “caused damage to Iran’s nuclear facilities, however, Iran retains highly enriched uranium that could be used to make a bomb.”

Vinograd said, however, that the most immediate threat posed by Iran – not only to Israel but also to US forces in the region – may well be its huge arsenal of conventional ballistic missiles, not its Potential to try to build a viable nuclear weapon..

“Iran has had more ballistic missiles than any other nation in the region other than Israel, and that’s really their leverage when it comes to wreaking havoc across the region, both against targets in Israel and American troops abroad, through proxies and more.”

“There appears to be some sort of intelligence gap between what the United States believes Iran is doing and is capable of doing, and what Israeli intelligence says on those fronts.”

Pezeshkian said on Saturday that tension between the two sides had already risen again, stating: “We are in a full-scale war with the United States, Israel and Europe; they do not want our country to remain stable.”

Iran has insisted that it will no longer enrich uranium anywhere in the country, trying to signal to the West that it remains open to possible negotiations over its atomic program.

U.S. intelligence agencies and the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency last assessed that Iran had an organized nuclear weapons program in 2003, although Tehran had continued to enrich uranium up to 60%, which is a short technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%.