President Donald Trump said Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, should be worried about a U.S. military building up in the region, and hinted at a new round of strikes if Tehran attempts to restart its nuclear program.
"I would say he should be very worried," Trump said of Khamenei during an NBC News interview. "Yeah, he should be."
Trump has been trading bellicose barbs with Khamenei for weeks and had threatened military action in response to a violent crackdown on protesters, in which the Iranian government is accused of killing thousands. He has also said the country needs "new leadership" and repeatedly talked up an "armada" of warships he's deployed to the region.
The U.S. president previously credited himself with preventing mass executions in Iran, and said in the NBC interview that he'd had protesters' backs. He invoked U.S. strikes last summer on Iran's nuclear facilities and said he'd been told Iran is trying to restart its nuclear program.
"We said, 'You do that, we're going to do very bad things to you,'" Trump added.
Khamenei has hit back, accusing the U.S. of trying to "seize control" of the country. He said on Feb. 1 that any country that initiates war with Iran will "face a decisive blow" and warned that a conflict with America would become a regional war.
Special envoy Steve Witkoff is expected to meet with Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, this week for direct talks that could lay the groundwork an agreement between the two nations. Trump told reporters this week that he'd like to strike a deal with Tehran. "And if we can't, probably bad things would happen," he said on Feb. 2.
The U.S. president previously credited himself with preventing mass executions in Iran, and said in the NBC interview that he'd had protesters' backs. He invoked U.S. strikes last summer on Iran's nuclear facilities and said he'd been told Iran is trying to restart its nuclear program.
"We said, 'You do that, we're going to do very bad things to you,'" Trump added.
International Glance
Russian forces attacked a bus carrying miners in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region on Sunday, Feb. 1, killing 15 people.
Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodríguez on Thursday signed a law that will open the nation’s oil sector to privatization, reversing a tenet of the self-proclaimed socialist movement that has ruled the country for more than two decades.
News that a unit of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement would be present during the upcoming Winter Games has set off concern and confusion in Italy, where people have expressed outrage at the inclusion of an agency that has dominated headlines for leading the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodríguez said she has had enough of orders from Washington, in a speech to a group of oil workers broadcast on Venezuela’s state-run television network Sunday.






























