Trump weighs major strike on Iran as nuclear talks show no progress

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump is weighing a major new strike on Iran after preliminary discussions between Washington and Tehran over limiting the country’s nuclear program and ballistic missile production failed to make progress, CNN reported citing people familiar with the matter.

Trump’s latest threats were met with indignation by Tehran, which vowed an immediate response to any US military action, with one top adviser to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei threatening to target Israel if an attack goes ahead.

Iran’s foreing minister Abbas Araghchi warned Wednesday that the country’s armed forces are fully prepared to respond “immediately and powerfully” to any aggression against Iran’s territory, airspace or waters.

“Our brave Armed Forces are prepared — with their fingers on the trigger — to immediately and powerfully respond to ANY aggression against our beloved land, air, and sea,” Araghchi wrote in English on X. The Iranian Foreign Ministry said the remarks were in response to threats from Trump.

Ali Shamkhani, a key adviser to Supreme Leader Khamenei, warned on X that any military action would be considered the start of war and vowed an “unprecedented” response, specifically naming Tel Aviv as a target.

Amir Saeid Iravani, Iran’s ambassador to the UN, has written to the Security Council, calling on it to act over Trump’s latest threats as they are a clear violation of the UN Charter’s ban on the threat of force.

The letter to the UN, the sixth since tensions between Washington and Tehran surged amid its crackdown on protests that broke out late last year, cites Trump’s warning that a “massive Armada is heading to Iran” as “an explicit and unambiguous threat of the use of force”.

It said Trump’s latest statement was “not an isolated incident but forms part of a broader and well-documented pattern of coercion, intimidation, destabilising activities, covert intelligence operations, and unlawful pressure” against Tehran.

The letter said that Iran reaffirmed its right to self-defence under international law and said it would “exercise its right to take all necessary measures to defend its sovereignty, territorial integrity, and people”.

Trump on Wednesday posted on Truth Social demanding that Iran come to the table to negotiate “a fair and equitable deal – NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS.” He warned the next US attack on the country “will be far worse” than the one it carried out last summer, when the US military attacked three of Iran’s nuclear sites.

Options he is now considering include US military airstrikes aimed at Iran’s leaders and the security officials believed to be responsible for the killings, as well as strikes on Iranian nuclear sites and government institutions, the sources said.

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The USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group entered the Indian Ocean on Monday and is continuing to move closer to Iran where it could support any potential operations against the country, both in terms of aiding in strikes and in protecting regional allies from potential Iranian retaliation.

The US and Iran had been exchanging messages — including through Omani diplomats and between Trump’s foreign envoy Steve Witkoff and Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi — earlier this month about a possible meeting to ward off a US attack, which Trump had been threatening in response to protesters’ deaths, the sources said.

Amid the threats of military action, the US has also demanded preconditions for a meeting with Iranian officials, the sources said, including a permanent end to uranium enrichment central to Iran’s nuclear program, new curbs on Iran’s ballistic missile program and halting all support for Iranian proxies in the region.

The biggest sticking point, sources said, has been the US demand that Iran agree to put limits on the range of its ballistic missiles — an acute concern for Israel, which expended much of its missile interceptor stockpile shooting down Iranian ballistic missiles during last June’s 12-day war. Iran has balked at that and told the US it would only discuss its nuclear program. The US has not replied, leaving both sides at a dead end, the sources said.

A US official on Monday said the administration is still willing to engage with Iran as long as “they know what the terms are.”

“We are open for business…as they say, so if they want to contact us and they know what the terms are, then we’re going to have the conversation,” the official told reporters.

Still, the US is preparing for possible action. The US military has been moving air defense systems to the region, including additional Patriot batteries, to help protect US forces there from possible Iranian retaliation, a US official said. The US is also planning to move one or more THAAD missile defense systems to the region, multiple sources said.

Meanwhile, the US Air Force is set to conduct a multi-day air exercise in the Middle East, allowing airmen to prove “they can disperse, operate, and generate combat sorties under demanding conditions — safely, precisely and alongside our partners,” said a statement from Lt. Gen. Derek France, US Central Command’s AFCENT commander and Combined Forces Air Component commander. — Agencies