A senior Iranian cleric on Friday claimed that if Washington continues to seek conflict with Tehran, then their bases would no longer be secure.
{mosads}“If America does anything wrong, their bases around Iran would not remain secure,” Tehran Friday prayer leader Ayatollah Mohammadali Movahedi Kermani was quoted as saying by the Mizan news agency.
He did not elaborate on the threat.
This comment is most likely in response to a new report from the State Department released on Tuesday.
The report focused on the risk that Iran’s missile capabilities pose to allies in the region. It claimed that Iran has “a stockpile of hundreds of missiles that threaten its neighbors in the region.”
President Trump echoed these claims on Tuesday in a speech at the United Nations General Assembly.
“We cannot allow the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism to possess the planet’s most dangerous weapons. We cannot allow a regime that chants ‘Death to America,’ and that threatens Israel with annihilation, to possess the means to deliver a nuclear warhead to any city on Earth,” Trump said. “Just can’t do it.”
Despite this rhetoric, the U.S. seems to be realigning its security posture away from the Middle East toward threats posed by Russia and China.