US President Donald Trump has threatened Iran’s existence as the renewed strikes between the Islamic regime and the U.S. threaten a shaky ceasefire.
“United States aircraft just struck Iranian missile and drone storage locations, and coastal radar sites, for violating the Cease Fire Agreement, AGAIN!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “It is very possible that they will never learn! There may come a point when we are no longer able to be reasonable, and will be forced to militarily complete the job that we very successfully started. If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!”
The threat against Iran’s existence echoes past warnings Trump made earlier this year while attempting to get Iran to the negotiating table. In April, the president issued the ominous threat that Iran’s “whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”
When asked about the threat days later, he said he was “fine with it.” Democratic lawmakers fumed over the initial post, calling it “pure evil” while others accused the president of threatening war crimes and genocide, and demanded that he be removed from office.
The latest post was written before Iran carried out retaliatory strikes on Kuwait and Bahrain on Sunday, accusing the U.S. of violating the ceasefire. No injuries have been reported. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) warned that more attacks from the U.S. will result in the “complete halt of all diplomatic processes.”
Iran struck a Singapore-flagged cargo ship near the coast of Oman on Thursday. The vessel’s starboard side and bridge were damaged in the attack, but no one aboard was injured, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Center, which is affiliated with the British Royal Navy.
U.S. Central Command (Centcom) said on Saturday that it carried out more strikes on Iranian targets following an attack on a Panama-flagged tanker near the Strait of Hormuz. A one-way drone struck the tanker M/T Kiku as it was transiting near the strait with more than 2 million barrels of crude oil on board at around 4:30 a.m., according to Centcom.
Iran reasserted its authority over the Strait of Hormuz, warning on Friday that ships will safely pass through if they coordinate with officials. The 14-point memorandum of understanding (MOU) guarantees that no vessels will pay a toll to safely pass through the strait. Trump administration officials have long maintained that Iran enforcing a toll through the strait would violate international law.
The U.S. and Iran electronically signed the 14-point MOU to extend the pause on all hostilities for 60 days in order to negotiate an end to the conflict and determine the future of Iran’s nuclear program, as well as restore unrestricted navigation through the strait.
But Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that any “interference in this matter… will only lead to further complications, delay the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, and increase the level of tension, just as over the past two nights we witnessed incidents in the Strait of Hormuz that led to an increase in tension and confrontation,” The Associated Press reported.