US President Donald J. Trump delivers his first address to a joint session of Congress from the floor of the House of Representatives in Washington, DC, USA, 28 February 2017. / AFP / EPA POOL / JIM LO SCALZO (Photo credit should read JIM LO SCALZO/AFP/Getty Images) TOPSHOT - A vendor picks up a 100 yuan note above a newspaper featuring a photo of US president-elect Donald Trump, at a news stand in Beijing on November 10, 2016. The world's second-largest economy is US president-elect Donald Trump's designated bogeyman, threatening it on the campaign trail with tariffs for stealing American jobs, but analysts say US protectionism could create opportunities for Beijing. / AFP / GREG BAKER (Photo credit should read GREG BAKER/AFP/Getty Images) US President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron hold a joint press conference at the White House in Washington, DC, on April 24, 2018. (Photo by LUDOVIC MARIN / AFP) (Photo credit should read LUDOVIC MARIN/AFP/Getty Images) SAN FRANCISCO, CA - FEBRUARY 08: Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau looks on before speaking to members of the media during a visit to AppDirect on February 8, 2018 in San Francisco, California. Trudeau is visiting several cities in the U.S. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) US President Donald Trump and Russia's President Vladimir Putin attend a joint press conference after a meeting at the Presidential Palace in Helsinki, on July 16, 2018. (Photo by Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP) (Photo credit should read BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images) President Donald Trump talks on the phone aboard Air Force One during a flight to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to address a joint gathering of House and Senate Republicans, Thursday, January 26, 2017. This was the Presidentâs first Trip aboard Air Force One. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead) (CNN) — First, an admission: I have no idea why President Donald Trump tweeted the following at 11:24 p.m. Eastern Time on Sunday night: “To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!” The likely reasons, as I see them: Mired in a downward spiral in regard to the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, Trump was trying to DRAMATICALLY CHANGE THE SUBJECT. He saw Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s comments that a war with Iran would be the “ mother of all wars ” and DECIDED TO SEND A MESSAGE LOUD AND CLEAR. Many people believe the former option to be the more likely. Maybe. Knowing Trump’s thin skinned-ness, however, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that someone showed him Rouhani’s quote – or, even more likely, he saw it on cable TV – and he lashed out. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders explained it this way in Monday’s press briefing: “The President’s been, I think, pretty strong since day one in his language toward Iran. He was responding to comments made from them, and he’s going to continue to focus on the safety and security of American people.” Regardless of why Trump did it, here’s *what* he did: Taunted an aspiring nuclear power with some of the harshest words we’ve heard from an American president. Trump’s thinking in regard to Iran is almost entirely informed by how he handled “negotiations” with North Korea. Trump called North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un “Little Rocket Man” and made clear that America’s “nuclear button” was far larger than North Korea’s. Fears ran rampant that Trump was tweeting the US into a war on the Korean peninsula. Then, somehow, Kim decided that a summit with Trump would make sense – and the two sat down in Singapore last month, a meeting that Trump claimed had gone terrifically. If it worked on Kim, Trump seems to believe, it will work on Rouhani. And it might! (To be clear: The summit “worked” in the sense it happened; denuclearization by the North Koreans is far from a done deal.) But Twitter diplomacy – which is one of the many things that Trump has ushered in as President – isn’t a tried-and-true approach to geopolitics. Especially since it’s not entirely clear whether Trump actually checked with anyone in his administration before issuing the threat again Iran. “The President consults with his national security team on a daily basis,” Sanders said earlier Monday when asked directly whether Trump had run his tweet by any of the relevant parties in his administration. You would think that if Trump had, in fact, checked with his national security team, Sanders would have been able to answer the question a little (or a lot) less vaguely. For Trump allies, this is all fine. Trump was elected as someone who knew how to deal with bullies and who wasn’t afraid to do things very differently than the way they had been done in the past. It worked with Kim, they will note. Who’s to say it won’t work with Rouhani too? The problem is, of course, what if it doesn’t work? What if Rouhani doesn’t react like Kim? What is he takes this threat as literal – and makes moves to counter it? Diplomacy isn’t a one-way street. Nor, typically, does a one-size-fits-all approach usually work. The question is whether Trump has any speed except PEDAL TO THE METAL AT ALL TIMES. He’s shown that gun-it style isn’t without its merits in regards North Korea. But can he shift gears if it doesn’t work as well with Iran? Does he understand – or care about – the complexities inherent in this sort of diplomacy? Or has he rendered those complexities irrelevant? All of it comes back to the question that sits at the heart of Trump’s presidency: Is he the exception or is he the new rule? Has he fundamentally altered the way nations negotiate – in addition to realigning the Republican Party and conducting an all-out assault on fact? Trump clearly believes he has – or he simply doesn’t know any other way to be.<doc-sep>Iran's President Hasan Rouhani delivers a speech after his swearing-in ceremony for the second term in office, at the parliament in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, Aug. 5, 2017. Rouhani, 68, a moderate cleric who secured re-election on May 19, promised that his country will pursue a "path of coexistence and interaction with the world." Donald Trump and Iran: the one thing to know WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 09: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump addresses a rally against the Iran nuclear deal on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol September 9, 2015 in Washington, DC. Thousands of people gathered for the rally, organized by the Tea Party Patriots, which featured conservative pundits and politicians. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Secretary Pompeo delivers remarks on "Supporting Iranian Voices", at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Center for Public Affairs. An Iranian woman walks past a mural depicting the Statue of Liberty with a dead face, painted on the wall of the former US embassy in the capital Tehran on August 7, 2018 - US President Donald Trump warned countries against doing business with Iran today as he hailed the "most biting sanctions ever imposed", triggering a mix of anger, fear and defiance in Tehran. (Photo by ATTA KENARE / AFP) (Photo credit should read ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images) (CNN) — President Donald Trump issued a furious, all-caps challenge to the Iranian regime late Sunday night, warning that any threats to the US would be met with unspecified dire consequences. The tirade signaled an immediate escalation of tensions between Washington and Tehran, and capped a weekend of angry tweets by the President on the Russia investigation and the legal problems facing his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen. “To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE,” Trump tweeted after returning to the White House from a weekend at his golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey. “WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!” Trump’s comments were in response to earlier remarks by Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, who warned the US that war with Tehran would be the “mother of all wars.” Rouhani warned Trump not to “play with the lion’s tail, because you will regret it eternally.” He also held out the possibility of a peaceful relationship with the US, in remarks reported by Iranian state media. On Monday, a senior officer in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Commander General Gholam Hossein Gheibparvar, described Trump’s remarks as “psychological warfare,” the semi-official ISNA news agency reported. Even before Trump’s tweet, his administration had already intensified the rhetoric against the regime. In a blistering speech earlier Sunday evening, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo likened the Iranian regime to the mafia, accusing the clerics that rule the country of enriching themselves and funding terrorism at the expense of ordinary Iranians. “To the regime, prosperity, security, and freedom for the Iranian people are acceptable casualties in the march to fulfill the Revolution,” Pompeo said in remarks delivered at the Ronald Reagan National Library in Simi Valley, California. “The level of corruption and wealth among regime leaders shows that Iran is run by something that resembles the mafia more than a government.” Among the most startling allegations leveled by Pompeo, who was CIA director before becoming secretary of state, was that Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has a personal hedge fund worth $95 billion. Strong language Trump’s broadside against Rouhani had echoes of his approach to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, whom he taunted and threatened on social media before agreeing to a summit. Yet even by Trump’s standards, the language was harsh, and surprised many Middle East watchers. “We’ve seen a lot of very bellicose words from Mr. Trump in the past, but this tweet … I think it takes it to a new level,” said CNN military analyst Rick Francona. “This seems to be a little out of character and really a little alarming for many people,” said Francona, a former US Air Force intelligence officer who worked in the Middle East and retired as a lieutenant colonel. “This is really dangerous.” Asked if Trump risked inciting a war with Iran with the tweet, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters Monday morning, “if anybody is inciting anything, look no further than to Iran.” She wouldn’t directly say whether Trump consulted with his national security team before the tweet. He speaks with them daily, she said, but declined to give any details about any steps Trump is looking to take with Iran. “The President’s been, I think, pretty strong since day one in his language toward Iran. He was responding to comments made from them, and he’s going to continue to focus on the safety and security of American people,” Sanders said at the White House briefing later Monday. She declined repeated questions about whether Trump would consider meeting with Rouhani. Later Monday morning, national security adviser John Bolton said Trump told him that “if Iran does anything at all to the negative, they will pay a price like few countries have ever paid before.” John Rood, the Pentagon’s undersecretary of defense for policy, told CNN’s Barbara Starr at the Aspen Security Conference in Aspen, Colorado, on Friday that the US hadn’t adjusted its military posture in response to threats from Iran. “I don’t think that’s warranted. I wouldn’t recommend that,” he said. Hard line against Iran Trump came into office vowing to take a hard line on Iran and scrap the Obama-negotiated nuclear deal of 2015, a promise he fulfilled in May. The agreement forced Iran to curtail its uranium enrichment capacity to prevent it developing nuclear weapons, and imposed stringent verification processes, in exchange for relief on crippling sanctions. One of Trump’s many criticisms of the accord, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, was that it did not do enough to stop Iran from funding extremist groups throughout the Middle East. The other signatories to the deal have vowed to stand by it.<doc-sep>WASHINGTON—The Trump administration exchanged threats with Iran, turning to a longstanding security concern and a top foreign-policy focus of President Donald Trump’s key supporters. In a Twitter message addressed “To Iranian President Rouhani,” Mr. Trump wrote: “NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE.” The tweet late Sunday night appeared to refer to comments by President Hassan Rouhani warning the Trump administration against continuing hard-line policies against Iran. “America should know that peace with Iran is the mother of all peace, and war with Iran is the mother of all wars,” Mr. Rouhani said earlier. The comments were tougher than usual for the Iranian president, who is seen in the Iranian context as a moderate. Iranian officials on Monday warned they would retaliate against any U.S. military action. Mr. Trump’s threat wasn’t accompanied by any U.S. military preparations. The U.S. military has been gradually easing its posture in the Middle East region in recent months, reflecting what Pentagon officials said was a drop-off in unsafe or provocative Iranian acts toward ships traveling through the Strait of Hormuz since late last year. As of Monday, the Pentagon hadn’t begun to move any U.S. forces or shift military posture near Iran. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders dismissed suggestions from some Democrats that the president was trying to distract from his political troubles at home, including negative reaction to his rapport during his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week in Helsinki. “The president is responding to Iran and he’s not going to allow them to continue to make threats against America,” she told reporters Monday. “If anyone’s inciting anything, look no further than to Iran...The president has the ability, unlike a lot of those in the media, to focus on more than one issue at a time.” John Bolton, the national security adviser, reiterated the president’s warning on Monday. “I spoke to the president over the last several days, and President Trump told me that if Iran does anything at all to the negative, they will pay a price like few countries have ever paid before,” he said. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in an address in Los Angeles on Sunday, castigated Iran’s clerical leaders and called on other countries to join the U.S. campaign of pressure and sanctions against the Islamic Republic. Iranian Defense Minister Amir Hatami said the U.S. and its allies “don’t understand any other language than force,” as he announced a new production line of air-to-air missiles in Tehran. And Mohsen Rezaei, a former commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, warned Mr. Trump on Twitter that 50,000 U.S. troops are in range of Iranian weapons. The U.S. previously maintained an aircraft-carrier strike group in the Middle East but doesn’t have one there now. The USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier left the region last week and the Navy has no immediate plans to replace it, defense officials said. During its most recent deployment to the region, the Truman never passed through the Suez Canal, instead positioning itself in the Mediterranean Sea between the Middle East and Europe. The group conducted strikes against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria from the eastern Mediterranean. In recent weeks, the most prominent Navy presence in the Middle East was the amphibious warship USS Iwo Jima, which arrived in the Persian Gulf last month and has since left. Earlier this month the U.S. Navy quietly deployed the three-ship Essex Amphibious Ready Group and the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which will operate in both the Middle East and the Western Pacific. Related Video With the U.S out of the Iran nuclear agreement, the Trump administration is clamping down on the Iranian regime. The Wall Street Journal's Gerald F. Seib explains the sources of pressure. Photo: Reuters Mr. Trump withdrew the U.S. from the 2015 Iran nuclear accord in May, and the administration later issued 12 demands for a new deal. Mr. Pompeo warned at the time that the U.S. would impose the “strongest sanctions in history” unless Iran agreed. Tehran swiftly rejected the terms, which include one requiring a wholesale change in its military posture in the Middle East, where it is backing groups of fighters in Iraq and Syria. The U.S. is at odds with European allies over its decision to leave the Iran nuclear agreement, but allied governments will have difficulty protecting their businesses from the return of U.S. sanctions. For example, the U.S. wants countries to cut back their consumption of Iranian oil by November, and have warned of so-called secondary sanctions against businesses and governments that don’t comply. Mr. Pompeo in his speech on Sunday called Iran’s religious leaders “hypocritical holy men.” The country “is run by something that resembles the mafia more than a government,” he said, saying its leaders have taken vast amounts of wealth at the expense of the country’s people. “We are asking all nations who are sick and tired of the Islamic Republic’s destructive behavior to join our pressure campaign,” Mr. Pompeo said. He has drawn parallels to the administration’s “maximum pressure” policy on North Korea, which has been subjected to sanctions intended to force it to give up its nuclear arsenal and ballistic missiles. In Iran’s case, U.S. measures would include pressure on countries to reduce their purchases of Iranian oil to zero, with very few case-by-case exemptions. Mr. Trump’s Sunday tweet was similar to a threat he made to North Korea in front of reporters last August—of “fire and fury like the world has never seen.” A month later, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un responded, “I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged U.S. dotard with fire.” The escalating rhetoric could push Iran to seek to gain more leverage over the U.S. before entering into any kind of talks, said Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, a Washington-based advocacy group. It would be a mistake, Mr. Parsi continued, to compare the problems of Iran and North Korea because U.S. allies in the Middle East were unlikely to act as brokers.<doc-sep>President Donald Trump escalated a war of words with Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani with a menacing tweet late Sunday. In the nearly all-caps tweet, Trump directly warned the Iranian president to “NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN,” adding that any new ones would bring "CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE.” Trump's tweet came hours after Rouhani’s own warning over the weekend, reported by Iranian state news agency IRNA, that Trump was playing “with the lion's tail.” "America should know that peace with Iran is the mother of all peace, and war with Iran is the mother of all wars," Rouhani said. Trump called the comments “DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!" To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 23, 2018 He stood by his forceful remarks Monday, when reporter asked if he was concerned about provoking tensions with Iran on Monday. "Not at all," Trump said during an event at the White House. The fiery rhetoric by both presidents comes against the backdrop of increasingly adversarial actions between the two nations. In May, Trump announced his intention to withdraw the U.S. from the Iran nuclear deal and threatened the “highest level” of sanctions against the country and any others that do business with it. Iranian hackers, meanwhile, were planning extensive cyberattacks on U.S. and European targets, prompting consideration of a U.S. counterattack, multiple senior U.S. officials told NBC News. The Trump administration appears to have launched a concerted verbal assault on Iran. Speaking in California on Sunday night, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. supports Iranian protesters who he said have been taking to the streets recently to oppose corruption and call for expanded rights. “In light of these protests and 40 years of regime tyranny, I have a message for the people of Iran: the United States hears you. The United States supports you. The United States is with you," Pompeo said according to prepared remarks released in advance of his speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley. He added: "While it is ultimately up to the Iranian people to determine the direction of their country, the United States, in the spirit of our own freedoms, will support the long-ignored voice of the Iranian people." On Monday, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif seemed to mock Trump's all-caps broadside with a tweet of his own. "COLOR US UNIMPRESSED: The world heard even harsher bluster a few months ago," he said on Twitter. "And Iranians have heard them — albeit more civilized ones — for 40 yrs. We’ve been around for millennia & seen fall of empires, incl our own, which lasted more than the life of some countries. BE CAUTIOUS!"<doc-sep>
Donald Trump has threatened Iran with “consequences the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before”, in a late-night, all capital-letter tweet. The post, sent at 11.24pm ET on Sunday night, came after the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, warned the US about pursuing a hostile policy against his government, suggesting “war with Iran is the mother of all wars”. Rouhani did not rule out peace, however, according to comments reported by the Iranian state news agency, IRNA. The US president, who returned to the White House on Sunday evening after spending the weekend at his golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey, addressed his tweet directly to Rouhani, warning the president to “NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN”. 02:11 What is the Iran nuclear deal? – video The message continued: “WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!” On Monday morning, White House staff members duly supported Trump’s tweet. The press secretary, Sarah Sanders, told Fox News the president was not inciting a confrontation, and said “the only person that is inciting anything is Iran”. “The president certainly uses tough language,” she said, “but he’s also not afraid to take tough steps if necessary.” In a statement, the national security adviser, John Bolton, said: “President Trump told me that if Iran does anything at all to the negative, they will pay a price like few countries have ever paid before.” Bolton is a proponent of interventionist foreign policy and was ambassador to the United Nations in the administration of George W Bush, during the Iraq war. In Iran, government officials avoided kneejerk responses. The head of the voluntary basij paramilitary force, Gholamhossein Gharibpour, said: “What Trump is saying against Iran is merely psychological warfare. He wouldn’t dare to make the mistake of taking any actions against Iran.” Foaz Izadi, a prominent commentator close to the establishment, told the Guardian that Trump’s tweet was “designed to address his base in the US. You need to remember that he is facing elections in November and if Democrats gain power in the US congress, they will impeach him.” If Iran does anything at all to the negative, they will pay a price like few countries have ever paid before John Bolton Trump is still reeling from domestic criticism over his handling of a summit with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and the continued fallout of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. He withdrew the US from the Iran nuclear deal earlier this year. The move unravelled a signature foreign policy achievement of the Obama administration and threatened to destabilise Iran’s denuclearisation programme. On Sunday, Rouhani addressed Trump directly in his reported remarks, saying: “Mr Trump, don’t play with the lion’s tail, this would only lead to regret.” He continued: “America should know that peace with Iran is the mother of all peace, and war with Iran is the mother of all wars.” Earlier, Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, said Iran’s ruling elite were a “mafia” who had amassed vast sums of wealth while allowing their people to suffer. As the US prepares to reimpose economic sanctions on Tehran, Pompeo said the country’s religious leaders were “hypocritical holy men”. “Sometimes it seems the world has become desensitised to the regime’s authoritarianism at home and its campaigns of violence abroad,” Pompeo said in prepared remarks for a speech at the Ronald Reagan presidential library and museum in California. “But the proud Iranian people are not staying silent about their government’s many abuses. “And the United States under President Trump will not stay silent either. In light of these protests and 40 years of regime tyranny, I have a message for the people of Iran: the United States hears you. The United States supports you. The United States is with you.” Pompeo castigated Iran’s political, judicial and military leaders, accusing several by name of participating in widespread corruption. He also said the government had “heartlessly repressed its own people’s human rights, dignity and fundamental freedoms”. America’s top diplomat was particularly barbed in his remarks about “the ayatollahs,,” saying they “are in on the act, too”.