Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, speaks after Eid al-Fitr prayers at the Mosalla mosque in Tehran on Monday. (Supreme Leader Office/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock )
A senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Monday that Iran will “move toward” a nuclear weapon in response to a U.S. or Israeli attack, just a day after President Donald Trump threatened “bombing the likes of which they have never seen before” if Tehran refuses to destroy its nuclear program and cease supporting proxy militias in the Middle East.
“If America or Israel bomb Iran under the nuclear pretext, Iran will be compelled to move toward producing an atomic bomb,” the adviser, Ali Larijani, said in a television interview, according to Iranian press reports. Iran has long maintained that its nuclear program was only for peaceful purposes.
Trump spoke of a possible attack in a Sunday evening interview with NBC News. “If they don’t make a deal, there will be bombing,” he said. He also threatened what he called “secondary tariffs” against countries that do business with Tehran. Over the past week, he has stepped up sanctions against Iran’s oil industry and, on Tuesday, against its drone and ballistic missile procurement networks.
Although it was unclear what immediately provoked Trump’s heightened language, the risks of direct confrontation have intensified rapidly in the past month. Trump has launched increasing military strikes against Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen — who restarted maritime attacks on commercial shipping and U.S. naval vessels in the Red Sea after Israel resumed its attacks in Gaza following a brief ceasefire.
Last month, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iran has substantially expanded its production of highly enriched uranium and is further increasing its stockpile of near-weapons-grade material, shortening the time it would need to produce a nuclear device.
Meanwhile, the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has more openly expressed its desire that the United States join it in an attack against Iran, which U.S. intelligence has estimated is likely during the first half of this year.
The U.S. Air Force Global Strike Command confirmed reports that it has deployed a contingent of B-2 Spirit stealth bombers to Diego Garcia, the Navy’s island base in the Indian Ocean. The B-2 can carry the Pentagon’s largest “bunker-buster” munitions, thought to be capable of penetrating Iran’s underground nuclear facilities, as well as precision-guided munitions and nuclear weapons.
“To preserve operational security, we do not discuss details about exercises or operations,” command spokesperson Carla Pampe said in a statement Tuesday.
On Tuesday afternoon, Defense Department spokesman Sean Parnell said that the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier strike group was heading to the Middle East in support of another naval strike group already in the Red Sea.
During his first administration, Trump pulled the U.S. out of a 2015 agreement between world powers and Iran in which Tehran agreed to verified limits on its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. He reimposed “maximum pressure” sanctions and said he would make a “better deal” in negotiations that never materialized.
Efforts by President Joe Biden to negotiate a return to the original agreement did not succeed.
In early March — even as mutual antagonism escalated — Trump launched a new effort, sending a letter to Khamenei, delivered by an emissary from the United Arab Emirates, that offered direct talks about curtailing Iran’s nuclear program. Peace is “what I want,” the letter said, according to a description of its contents by Steve Witkoff, the president’s Middle East envoy, in an online interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
“There’s no reason for us to do this militarily. We should talk. … We should clear up misconceptions. We should create a verification program so that nobody worries about weaponization of your nuclear material. And I’d like us to get to that place, because the alternative is not a very good alternative,” Witkoff said Trump wrote.
Khamenei responded last week, Iranian officials said. His letter to Trump was passed through representatives in Oman, which has served as a venue for secret U.S.-Iran talks in previous administrations.
Addressing a meeting of his cabinet Sunday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said that Iran’s letter rejected direct talks but was open to negotiations with the U.S. through a third party. “As the Islamic Republic had never blocked the paths of indirect negotiations before, this letter has also mentioned that the road to indirect negotiation is left open and has emphasized that Iran has never avoided negotiations,” he said, according to Iranian media reports.
As do U.S. officials, top Iranian officials often differ in tone and content when discussing foreign and military policy. In contrast to Pezeshkian’s diplomatic remarks, Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Aerospace Division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on Monday threatened attacks on U.S. military installations in the region.
“The Americans have 10 bases in the region, particularly around Iran,” he said, referring apparently to air and naval bases on the Arabian Peninsula as well as forces in Iraq, Jordan and Syria. “This means they are sitting in a glass house, and when one sits in a glass house, one does not throw stones at others.”
For his part, Khamenei warned Monday that any move against Iran would bring a “crushing and decisive blow.”
While Trump has offered both the carrot of talks and the stick of U.S. bombing, other members of his national security team have leaned toward one side or the other. Speaking last month to radio host Hugh Hewitt, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Trump was not only prepared to take military action if Iran does not comply with his demands, but also to “go further, perhaps even threaten the regime.”
His fellow Iran hawk Michael Waltz, the president’s national security adviser, told CBS’s “Face the Nation” last month that Iran must agree to “full dismantlement” of its uranium enrichment and other weapons programs.
“This isn’t some kind of, you know, kind of tit-for-tat that we had under the Obama administration or Biden,” Waltz said. “This is the full program. Give it up or there will be consequences.”
But Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, while citing Iran’s support for proxies in the region and stockpiling of highly enriched uranium, reconfirmed in Senate testimony last week that the U.S. intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and … Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.”
Witkoff, Trump’s point man in difficult negotiations between Israel and Hamas, and Ukraine and Russia, said the president wants to treat Iran with “respect.” Expressing optimism that a peaceful resolution was possible, he told Carlson, “I’m certainly hopeful for it.”
Missy Ryan contributed to this report.