Trump and Iran’s supreme leader trade threats as mediators try to save their crumbling deal

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — U.S. and Iranian leaders traded threats on Saturday as the interim deal to end the war buckled under crossfire in the Middle East and efforts continued to keep talks going.

President Donald Trump overnight made threats on social media of further missile attacks against Iran, after the funeral of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei saw open calls for the U.S. leader’s killing. Senior U.S. officials demanded that Iran make a public statement saying the Strait of Hormuz is open and ships won’t be attacked.

Later, Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei vowed that Iranians would continue to avenge his father’s death. Such revenge “is the will of our nation and must certainly be carried out,” he said in remarks carried by state television. He still has not been seen publicly since the war began on Feb. 28 with strikes that killed his father.

Tehran has insisted that the strait remain under its control and that it be allowed to charge ships moving through it, a stance it took after the war began.

The exchange of threats followed days of U.S. airstrikes targeting Iran, sparked by Iran’s attacks on three ships in the strait, and Iranian retaliatory fire targeting Arab nations in the region.

Trump has declared the ceasefire over but said the U.S. would continue negotiations. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Saturday traveled to Oman, located on the other side of the strait, for more talks, a day after Qatari mediators met with officials in Tehran.

Trump says he responded to threats to kill him

A thousand “missiles are Locked and Loaded and aimed at the Islamic Republic of Iran, with thousands more to immediately follow, should the Iranian Government act on its threat,” Trump wrote on his website.

He said he was responding to threats “to assassinate, or attempt to assassinate” him. During Khamenei’s funeral, mourners held posters or banners calling for Trump to be killed along with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Iran buried Khamenei, 86, this week.

Trump added that the U.S. military would “completely decimate and destroy all areas of Iran — PRAISE BE TO ALLAH!”

Trump has repeatedly invoked the name of God in Arabic, and threatened to destroy Iran’s very civilization. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, an advocacy group, has criticized Trump’s “deranged mocking of Islam.”

US officials accuse hard-liners of trying to sabotage the deal

U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity about the current situation with Iran, said the resumption of strikes this week came after what they described as a rogue faction of Iranian hard-liners tried to sabotage the ceasefire.

However, Iran has insisted its theocracy is unified under the new supreme leader.

After the U.S. wrapped up its latest strikes on Thursday, more attacks reportedly hit Iran, raising questions about who else may be targeting the Islamic Republic.

Israel didn’t claim them, meaning the Gulf Arab states may have launched them, likely as a means to deter Iran from attacking them again. Iran on Thursday retaliated for U.S. strikes by targeting Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait and Qatar.

The strikes in Iran over two days killed at least 17 people and wounded 115 others, Iranian Health Ministry spokesperson Hossein Kermanpour said.

US says nuclear deal will require Iran to turn over enriched uranium

The U.S. officials told journalists the U.S. would never reach a nuclear deal with Iran if it does not first stop its attacks on ships in the strait.

They also said any deal on Iran’s nuclear program would require Tehran to turn over its stockpile of highly enriched uranium. That’s something Iran has repeatedly refused.

If the U.S. doesn’t reach a deal with Iran to turn over the material, it has military options to ensure that it remains buried underground forever, the officials said. They did not detail them.

The uranium, enriched to near weapons-grade levels, is believed to be at nuclear sites the U.S. bombed in 2025. Iran long has insisted its nuclear program is peaceful, though the International Atomic Energy Agency has said the Islamic Republic is the world’s only country to enrich uranium so highly without a weapons program.

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