DUBAI\u00a0\u2014\u00a0U.S. and Iranian leaders traded threats Saturday as the interim deal to end the war buckled under crossfire in the Middle East and efforts continued to keep talks going.<\/p>\n
President Trump overnight on social media threatened further missile attacks against Iran, after the funeral of slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei saw open calls for the U.S. leader\u2019s killing.<\/p>\n
Later, Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei vowed that Iranians would continue to avenge his father\u2019s death. Such revenge \u201cis the will of our nation and must certainly be carried out,\u201d he said in remarks carried by state television. He still has not been seen publicly since the war began Feb. 28 with U.S.-Israeli strikes that injured him and killed his father.<\/p>\n
The exchange of threats followed days of U.S. airstrikes targeting Iran, sparked by Iran\u2019s attacks on three ships in the Strait of Hormuz, and Iranian retaliatory fire targeting U.S.-allied Arab nations in the region.<\/p>\n
Tehran has insisted that the strait remain under its control and that it be allowed to charge ships moving through it, a stance it took after the war began. Senior U.S. officials have demanded that Iran make a public statement saying the strait is open and ships won\u2019t be attacked.<\/p>\n
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Saturday said he met with his counterpart in Oman, on the other side of the strait, to discuss the waterway and \u201cappropriate mechanisms for ensuring the safe passage of ships.\u201d Oman said it and Iran agreed to keep talking \u201cat the technical and political levels.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump has declared the ceasefire over but said the U.S. would continue negotiations. <\/p>\n
Trump says he responded to threats to kill him<\/p>\n
Trump wrote on his social media site that a thousand \u201cmissiles are Locked and Loaded and aimed at the Islamic Republic of Iran, with thousands more to immediately follow, should the Iranian Government act on its threat.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said he was responding to threats \u201cto assassinate, or attempt to assassinate\u201d him. During Khamenei\u2019s funeral, mourners held posters or banners calling for Trump to be killed along with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Iran buried Khamenei, 86, on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Trump added that the U.S. military would \u201ccompletely decimate and destroy all areas of Iran \u2014 PRAISE BE TO ALLAH!\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump has repeatedly invoked the name of God in Arabic, and threatened to destroy Iran\u2019s very civilization. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, an advocacy group, has criticized Trump\u2019s \u201cderanged mocking of Islam.\u201d<\/p>\n
Iran accuses U.S. of violating deal<\/p>\n
Araghchi accused the U.S. of violating the interim deal by ending waivers allowing Iran to sell crude oil on the open market in U.S. dollars. Washington says it ended them in response to the attacks on ships in the strait.<\/p>\n
\u201cReality check: There can only be mutual compliance,\u201d the foreign minister wrote on X.<\/p>\n
The world for decades has considered the strait an international waterway. The U.S. now urges mariners to transit on a southern route through Oman\u2019s territorial waters. Iran has said the strait must be under its sole control and that vessels should begin paying fees to Tehran.<\/p>\n
About a fifth of all traded oil and natural gas passed through it before the war began. Iran\u2019s grip on the strait during the war led to a global energy crisis, though oil prices have dropped since wartime highs of $120 a barrel.<\/p>\n
Tehran\u2019s diplomat at the United Nations said Friday that any activity in the strait, including its opening or demining operations, \u201crests exclusively with Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n
Iranian hard-liners assert themselves<\/p>\n
U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity about the current situation, said the resumption of strikes this week came after what they described as a rogue faction of Iranian hard-liners tried to sabotage the ceasefire.<\/p>\n
Iran contends that its theocracy is unified under the new supreme leader.<\/p>\n
After the U.S. wrapped up its latest strikes Thursday, more attacks reportedly hit Iran, raising questions about who else may be targeting the Islamic Republic.<\/p>\n
Israel didn\u2019t claim them, meaning gulf Arab states may have launched them, probably to deter Iran from attacking them again. Iran on Thursday retaliated for U.S. strikes by targeting Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait and Qatar.<\/p>\n
The strikes in Iran over two days killed at least 17 people and wounded 115 others, Iranian Health Ministry spokesperson Hossein Kermanpour said.<\/p>\n
Nuclear issues<\/p>\n
U.S. officials have told journalists the United States would never reach a nuclear deal with Iran if it does not first stop its attacks on ships in the strait.<\/p>\n
They also said any deal on Iran\u2019s nuclear program would require Tehran to turn over its stockpile of highly enriched uranium. That\u2019s something Iran has repeatedly refused.<\/p>\n
If the U.S. doesn\u2019t reach a deal with Iran to turn over the material, it has military options to ensure that it remains buried underground, the officials said. They did not detail them.<\/p>\n
The uranium, enriched to near weapons-grade levels, is believed to be at nuclear sites the U.S. bombed in 2025. Iran long has insisted its nuclear program is peaceful, though the International Atomic Energy Agency has said the Islamic Republic is the world\u2019s only country to enrich uranium so highly without a weapons program.<\/p>\n
Gambrell, Price and Weissert write for the Associated Press. Price and Weissert reported from Washington. AP writer Sam Metz in Ramallah, West Bank, contributed to this report. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DUBAI\u00a0\u2014\u00a0U.S. and Iranian leaders traded threats Saturday as the interim deal to end the war buckled under crossfire…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":395108,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[1794,217,6709,19378,48,52,51,47,50,49,60614,112362,158853,4542,96358,34127,158852,1519,158759,2281,2664],"class_list":["post-395107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-attack","tag-day","tag-deal","tag-iran","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-oil-price","tag-oman","tag-senior-u-s-official","tag-ship","tag-strait","tag-tehran","tag-threat-saturday","tag-trump","tag-u-s-leader","tag-u-s","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395107\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}