After President Trump’s Threat:

Iran Warns U.S. Against ‘New Strategic Mistake’

Date: 15 September 2020 - 21:50

News ID: ۸۲۸۵۴

TEHRAN (Dispatches) — Iran warned the U.S. on Tuesday against making a "strategic mistake” after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened Tehran over false reports it planned to avenge the assassination of top general Qassem Soleimani.
"We hope that they do not make a new strategic mistake and certainly in the case of any strategic mistake, they will witness Iran’s decisive response,” Government spokesman Ali Rabiei told a televised news conference.
A flimsy U.S. media report, quoting unnamed officials, claimed that an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate the U.S. ambassador to South Africa was planned before the U.S. presidential election in November.
"Any attack by Iran, in any form, against the United States will be met with an attack on Iran that will be 1,000 times greater in magnitude!” Trump wrote on Twitter on Monday.
Rabiei expressed regret that "the president of a country who has claims to global management and order would make hasty, agenda-fueled and dubious remarks on such a weak basis.”
He warned that reacting to such reports would "achieve nothing but disruption to the region and to world calm” and advised Trump to "refrain from fresh adventurism… for the sake of winning a new term as president.”
On Monday, the foreign ministry denied the report of an assassination plot as "baseless” and part of "repetitive and rotten methods to create an anti-Iranian atmosphere.”
The outright rebuttal by Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeid Khatibzadeh came after Politico news website claimed that Iran had sought to assassinate U.S. Ambassador to South Africa Lana Marks.
Khatibzadeh said the "malicious and agenda-driven” report published in the American media outlet cited the statements of a seemingly U.S. government official in an effort to make it appear true.
The spokesman later posted a tweet in which he advised American journalists to beware of falling into the trap of U.S. politicians’ efforts "to peddle lies.”
"U.S. warmongers have always used gullible ‘journalists’ to sell their folly. Under Bush they used them to sell the $7 trillion Iraq War. Now they are at it again, using Politico to peddle lies,” he wrote.
"U.S. media needs to be vigilant so as not to be used by politicians,” he added.
Relations between Washington and Tehran have been tense ever since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

They have deteriorated sharply since Trump unilaterally pulled out of a landmark international nuclear deal with Iran in May 2018 and reimposed the most aggressive sanctions.
The Iranian navy said last week that it drove off U.S. aircraft that flew close to an area where naval exercises were underway near the sensitive Strait of Hormuz.
The military said three U.S. aircraft were detected by air defenses.
One of them was a U.S. RQ-4 drone, the same model as one shot down by Iran in June last year after violating Iranian airspace.