Trump escalates rhetoric on Iran in response to Tehran's latest warnings

US President Donald Trump has escalated his warnings to Iran in response to the country's leadership's heightened rhetoric following his calls for regime change, UNN reports, citing CNN.

Details

Asked in a NewsNation interview that aired on Tuesday about recent warnings from Iranian officials, Trump said, "Well, they shouldn’t be doing it, but I’ve left notification that anything ever happens, we’re going to blow them up. The whole country is going to get blown up."

Trump added, "I would absolutely hit them so hard, but I have very firm instructions anything happens, they’re going to wipe them off the face of this earth."

Addition

Iran reiterated its warning to the US that any military action against the country's leadership would provoke "devastating retaliation," said the spokesman for the General Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, quoted by Iranian state Press TV.

On Saturday, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called the US president a "criminal" for his support of recent anti-government protests. Trump called Khamenei a "sick man" in an interview with Politico last weekend, saying it was "time to look for a new leader in Iran," remarks that Tehran condemned.

The Iranian parliamentary commission on national security stated that an attack on Khamenei would be "a declaration of war on the entire Islamic world" and could lead to a call from religious leaders for "jihad" or holy war.

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