- Iran army chief warns US, Israel against attack, says forces on high alert
Iran’s top security official said yesterday that Tehran was making progress towards beginning negotiations with the United States to avoid a military confrontation.
“Contrary to the hype of the contrived media war, structural arrangements for negotiations are progressing,” Ali Larijani, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, posted on X.
He was speaking a day after the Kremlin said he held talks in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and a day after US President Donald Trump predicted Iran would seek a deal to avoid US military action.
Earlier, Iranian army chief Amir Hatami yesterday warned the United States and Israel against an attack, saying his country’s forces were on high alert following Washington’s heavy military deployments in the Gulf, AFP reported from Paris.
He also insisted the Islamic republic’s nuclear expertise could not be eliminated, after Trump said he expected Tehran to seek a deal to avoid US strikes.
“If the enemy makes a mistake, without a doubt it will endanger its own security, the security of the region, and the security of the Zionist regime,” Hatami said, according to the official IRNA news agency.
He noted that Iran’s armed forces were “at full defensive and military readiness”.
Washington sent a naval strike group to the Middle East led by the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, with Trump threatening to intervene militarily after a deadly crackdown by Iranian authorities on two weeks of anti-government protests.
The deployment has raised fears of a possible direct confrontation with Iran, which has warned it would respond with missile strikes on US bases, ships and allies — notably Israel — in the event of an attack. On Friday,
Trump said he predicted that Iran would seek to negotiate a deal over its nuclear and missile programmes rather than face American military action.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi had said earlier that Tehran was ready for nuclear talks, but its missiles and defence “will never be negotiated”. With tensions heightened, Iranian authorities rushed to deny that several incidents yesterday were linked to any attack or sabotage.