A senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on Monday that Iran will “move toward” a nuclear weapon in response to a U.S. or Israeli attack - a day after President Donald Trump threatened “bombing the likes of which they have never seen before” if Tehran refuses to dismantle its nuclear program and stop supporting proxy militias in the Middle East.
“If America or Israel bomb Iran under the nuclear pretext, Iran will be compelled to move toward producing an atomic bomb,” the adviser, Ali Larijani, said in a television interview, according to Iranian press reports. Iran has long maintained that its nuclear program is solely for peaceful purposes.
‘Secondary tariffs’
Trump raised the possibility of an attack in a Sunday evening interview with NBC News. “If they don’t make a deal, there will be bombing,” he said. He also threatened what he called “secondary tariffs” on countries doing business with Tehran. Over the past week, he has ramped up sanctions on Iran’s oil sector and, on Tuesday, targeted its drone and ballistic missile procurement networks.
Although it was unclear what immediately triggered Trump’s intensified rhetoric, the risk of direct confrontation has grown sharply in the past month. Trump has launched escalating military strikes against Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen, who resumed maritime attacks on commercial shipping and U.S. naval vessels in the Red Sea after Israel renewed strikes in Gaza following a brief cease-fire.
Last month, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iran had substantially increased its production of highly enriched uranium and was further growing its stockpile of near-weapons-grade material - shortening the time needed to produce a nuclear device.
Meanwhile, the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has more openly urged the United States to join in a potential attack on Iran. U.S. intelligence estimates an Israeli strike is likely in the first half of the year.
The U.S. Air Force Global Strike Command confirmed that it has deployed B-2 Spirit stealth bombers to Diego Garcia, the Navy’s island base in the Indian Ocean. The B-2 can carry the Pentagon’s largest bunker-buster munitions, designed to penetrate Iran’s underground nuclear facilities, as well as precision-guided and nuclear weapons.
“To preserve operational security, we do not discuss details about exercises or operations,” command spokesperson Carla Pampe said in a statement on Tuesday.
Carrier bound for Middle East
On Tuesday afternoon, Defense Department spokesman Sean Parnell said the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier strike group was heading to the Middle East in support of another naval group already in the Red Sea.
During his first term, Trump withdrew the U.S. from a 2015 agreement between world powers and Iran in which Tehran agreed to verified limits on its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. He reimposed “maximum pressure” sanctions and promised a “better deal” that never materialized.
Efforts by President Joe Biden to revive the original agreement were unsuccessful.
In early March - even as tensions escalated - Trump initiated a new outreach, sending a letter to Khamenei via an emissary from the United Arab Emirates. The letter offered direct talks on curtailing Iran’s nuclear program. Peace is “what I want,” the letter said, according to Steve Witkoff, the president’s Middle East envoy, in an online interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
“There’s no reason for us to do this militarily. We should talk. … We should clear up misconceptions. We should create a verification program so that nobody worries about weaponization of your nuclear material. And I’d like us to get to that place, because the alternative is not a very good alternative,” Witkoff said Trump wrote.
Khamenei responded last week, Iranian officials said. His reply was passed through representatives in Oman, which has hosted secret U.S.-Iran talks in past administrations.
Open to negotiation
Addressing a cabinet meeting on Sunday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Iran’s reply rejected direct talks but left the door open to third-party negotiations. “As the Islamic Republic had never blocked the paths of indirect negotiations before, this letter has also mentioned that the road to indirect negotiation is left open and has emphasized that Iran has never avoided negotiations,” he said, according to Iranian media reports.
As with U.S. officials, top Iranian leaders often vary in tone and messaging on foreign and military policy. In contrast to Pezeshkian’s diplomatic language, Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ aerospace division, on Monday threatened attacks on U.S. military installations in the region.
“The Americans have 10 bases in the region, particularly around Iran,” he said, apparently referring to air and naval bases on the Arabian Peninsula and forces in Iraq, Jordan and Syria. “This means they are sitting in a glass house, and when one sits in a glass house, one does not throw stones at others.”
For his part, Khamenei warned on Monday that any action against Iran would result in a “crushing and decisive blow.”
Military action
While Trump has alternated between talk of diplomacy and threats of bombing, others on his national security team have taken firmer stances. Speaking last month to radio host Hugh Hewitt, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Trump was prepared to use force if Iran does not comply - and might “go further, perhaps even threaten the regime.”
Michael Waltz, the president’s national security adviser and a fellow Iran hawk, told CBS’s “Face the Nation” that Iran must agree to “full dismantlement” of its uranium enrichment and other weapons programs.
“This isn’t some kind of, you know, kind of tit-for-tat that we had under the Obama administration or Biden,” Waltz said. “This is the full program. Give it up or there will be consequences.”
But Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, while noting Iran’s support for regional proxies and its enriched uranium stockpile, told the Senate last week that U.S. intelligence “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and … Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.”
Witkoff, Trump’s envoy in negotiations involving Israel and Hamas and Ukraine and Russia, said the president wants to treat Iran with “respect.” Expressing optimism, he told Carlson, “I’m certainly hopeful for it.”