Trump threatens ‘ignorant and insulting’ Iran with ‘obliteration’ by ‘most powerful military force in world’

'Any attack by Iran on anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force,' president tweets

Donald Trump has threatened Iran with "obliteration" if the country launches any attack on US forces, in a Twitter rant railing against an "ignorant and insulting statement" by Tehran.

"Iran’s very ignorant and insulting statement, put out today, only shows that they do not understand reality", Mr Trump tweeted Tuesday morning.

"Any attack by Iran on anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force. In some areas, overwhelming will mean obliteration. No more John Kerry & Obama!"

Iran warned on Tuesday that new US sanctions targeting its supreme leader and other top officials meant “closing the doors of diplomacy” between Tehran and Washington amid heightened tensions, even as the country’s president derided the White House as being “afflicted by mental retardation.”

President Hassan Rouhani went on to call the sanctions against Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “outrageous and idiotic,” especially since the 80-year-old Shiite cleric has no plans to travel to the United States.

Yet the sharp response from Tehran shows the pressure that the nation’s Shiite theocracy and its 80 million people feel over the maximalist campaign of sanctions by the Trump administration.

From Israel, Mr Trump’s National Security Adviser John Bolton said Iran could walk through an “open door” to talks with America, though he also warned that “all options remain on the table” if Tehran makes good on its promise to begin breaking one limit from its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

The crisis gripping the Middle East stems from Mr Trump’s withdrawal of the US a year ago from the nuclear deal with Iran and other world powers and then imposing crippling new sanctions on Tehran.

Recently, Iran quadrupled its production of low-enriched uranium to be on pace to break one of the deal’s terms by Thursday, while also threatening to raise enrichment closer to weapons-grade levels on July 7 if European countries still abiding by the accord don’t offer a new deal.

Citing unspecified Iranian threats, the US has sent an aircraft carrier to the Middle East and deployed additional troops alongside the tens of thousands already there.

All this has raised fears that a miscalculation or further rise in tensions could push the US and Iran into an open conflict, 40 years after the Islamic Revolution.

Mr Trump enacted the new sanctions against Mr Khamenei and his associates on Monday.That action followed Iran’s downing on June 20 of a US surveillance drone, worth over $100m (£78,613), above the Strait of Hormuz, sharply escalating the crisis.

Mr Trump then said he pulled back from the brink of retaliatory military strikes but continued his pressure campaign against Iran.

The Associated Press contributed to this report