Iran has warned Donald Trump to ‘be careful not to be eliminated’ after the US President said he did not believe the regime’s new Supreme Leader can ‘live in peace’.
Mr Trump told Iran to brace for ‘death, fire and fury’ for keeping the Strait of Hormuz shut before threatening its new leader Mojtaba Khamenei.
He told Fox the new Supreme Leader will be unable to ‘live in peace’ and he was ‘not happy with the appointment’, having warned Iran he would have the final say over their leader.
But the regime’s security chief Ali Larijani dismissed Mr Trump’s comments, claiming Iran ‘is not afraid of your empty threats’.
He added: ‘Even those greater than you could not eliminate the Iranian nation. Take care of yourself not to be eliminated!’
Larijani’s threat comes just days after an Iranian operative was convicted for an assassination attempt against Mr Trump during the 2024 presidential race.
Mr Trump’s campaign was warned by national security officials that Iran was targeting him and had multiple kill teams inside the US.
Asif Merchant, a Pakistani national who was trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), was found guilty of the assassination plot on Saturday.
In other dramatic developments:
- Donald Trump threatened to bring ‘death, fire and fury’ down on Iran if it were to cut off the passage of oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz.
- US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday will be the ‘most intense day’ of attacks on Iran
- Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps reportedly announced that any Arab or European country that expels the ambassadors of the US and Israel will have ‘full authority and freedom’ to pass through the Strait of Hormuz
- Saudi Arabia’s oil company warned markets face ‘catastrophe’ over the strait’s disruption
- Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel is ‘not done yet’ in Iran as its military is ‘breaking the bones’ of the Iranian regime
- Israel warned Lebanese residents to evacuate ahead of a fresh wave of strikes against Hezbollah
- Massive airstrikes hit Tehran with ‘unusually large’ explosions after Trump vowed to end war ‘very soon’
- Emmanuel Macron has insisted Cyprus can ‘count on France’ as he rubbed salt in the wound of Britain’s military embarrassment
- A tearful Iranian footballer was dragged onto the team bus as protesters in Australia tried to stop the women’s team from being forced home
The aim, the department of justice said, was to take revenge for the killing of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani during Mr Trump’s first term in 2020.
Merchant arrived in the US from Pakistan in April 2024 after spending time in Iran and met various US law enforcement officers, who posed at hitmen, in New York.
He contacted Nadeem Ali, who he believed could help with the assassination, but was reported to the police.
Merchant admitted the IRGC sent him to the US to for political assassinations and his handler directed him to kill Trump.
The leader of the plot was killed in recent strikes, US defence secretary Pete Hegseth claimed.
Mr Trump previously warned Iran their Supreme Leader would ‘not last long if he doesn’t get approval from us.
‘We want to make sure that we don’t have to go back every 10 years, when you don’t have a president like me that’s not going to do it.’
Mojtaba, 56, the second son of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was confirmed as the country’s new leader on Sunday after being appointed by the regime’s 88-person assembly.
The hardline cleric has close ties to the brutal IRGC and is viewed as even more extremist than his father.
The ‘vengeful’ leader is marked for assassination by Israel after it vowed to ‘eliminate’ whoever succeeded the slain Ayatollah, having killed him and Mojtaba’s wife Zahra Haddad-Adel in strikes on the first day of the conflict.
Mojtaba has already been wounded, with Iranian state TV reporting describing him as ‘janbaz’, or wounded by the enemy, in the ‘Ramadan war,’ which is how media in Iran refer to the current conflict.
Mr Trump said Mojtaba’s appointment is ‘going to lead to just more of the same’, as he said he was aiming a new wave of deadly strikes at the regime after Tehran said not ‘one litre of oil’ would be shipped from the Middle East if attacks continue.
While Mr Hegseth said Mojtaba ‘would be wise’ to listen to Mr Trump and not pursue nuclear weapons.
Iranians have also protested the appointment of the Ayatollah’s son by shouting ‘death to Mojtaba’ from their houses.
On Monday, Mr Trump said the US had inflicted serious damage on Iran’s military and predicted the conflict would end well before the initial four-week time frame he had laid out, though he has not defined what victory would look like.
The president is under pressure as oil prices spike amid warnings of a global economic crisis.
He warned that US attacks could rise sharply if Iran sought to block tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, which handles one-fifth of the world’s oil supply.
‘We will hit them so hard that it will not be possible for them or anybody else helping them to ever recover that section of the world.’
The IRGC said it would not allow any oil to leave the region if attacks from the United States and Israel continue.
‘We are the ones who will determine the end of the war,’ a spokesperson said, describing Trump’s comments as ‘nonsense’, according to state media.
In a later Truth Social post, Trump repeated his warning.
‘If Iran does anything that stops the flow of Oil within the Strait of Hormuz, they will be hit by the United States of America TWENTY TIMES HARDER than they have been hit thus far,’ he said.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said Iran was unlikely to resume negotiations with the US, citing what he described as a ‘bitter experience’ with past talks.
‘After three rounds of negotiation, the American team in the negotiation said itself that we made a big progress. Still, they decided to attack us. So, I don’t think talking to the Americans anymore would be on our agenda any more,’ he said in an interview with PBS.
He added: ‘We are well prepared to continue attacking them with our missiles as long as needed and as long as it takes.’
The war has already effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz, leaving tankers unable to sail for more than a week and forcing producers to halt pumping as storage facilities fill.
The Ayatollah’s son was confirmed as new Supreme Leader on Sunday.
The Israeli military has already warned it will ‘pursue every successor’ of Khamenei.
In a post on X in Farsi, the IDF said: ‘After neutralizing the tyrant Khamenei, the terrorist regime of Iran is attempting to rebuild itself and select a new leader.
‘We want to tell you that the hand of the State of Israel will continue to pursue every successor and every person who seeks to appoint a successor.’
On Monday, large crowds in Tehran waved Iranian flags and shouted, ‘Allahu Akbar, Khamenei Rahbar’, meaning: ‘God is great, Khamenei is the leader.
Meanwhile, the US Defence Secretary said Tuesday would be the ‘most intense’ day of attacks.
He said the US was ‘crushing the enemy’, adding: ‘Today will be yet again, our most intense day of strikes inside Iran. The most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikes. Intelligence more refined, and better than ever.’
Mr Hegseth also claimed Iran has fired its fewest number of missiles in the past 24 hours since the start of the war.
Massive airstrikes thumped Tehran with explosions last night as Mr Trump promised the world the war would end ‘very soon’ and claimed the US has ‘already won’.
The sky above the Iranian capital glowed amid the latest wave of US-Israeli attacks proving the US President’s vow to ‘go further’ in the conflict was serious.
Mr Trump had earlier insisted war in the Middle East was ‘pretty much’ over and claimed the operation launched 10 days ago was ‘very far’ ahead of schedule.
The American President even described the massive US and Israeli onslaught as a ‘short-term excursion’ which will be ‘finished pretty quickly’.
But further remarks betrayed Mr Trump’s willingness to keep the war with Iran going, as he added: ‘We’ve already won in many ways but we haven’t won enough…we’re going to go further.’
He said: ‘We could call it a tremendous success right now… or we could go further, and we’re going to go further. We will not relent until the enemy is totally and decisively defeated.’
