DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Leaders in Washington and Tehran escalated their warnings Saturday, deepening uncertainty around a fragile interim agreement aimed at halting the war as violence continues to flare across the Middle East.
President Donald Trump sharpened his warnings of additional missile strikes on Iran in a series of Truth Social posts, issued after senior U.S. officials pressed Tehran to publicly affirm that the Strait of Hormuz remains open and that vessels using the critical shipping lane will not come under attack.
Trump’s remarks also followed funeral events for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, where calls for the U.S. president’s death were made openly.
Later Saturday, Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei pledged that Iranians would continue seeking vengeance for the killing of his father, Ali Khamenei, whose death was commemorated in funeral ceremonies across Iran throughout the week. In comments broadcast by state television, he said that revenge “is the will of our nation and must certainly be carried out.”
Tehran has so far resisted U.S. demands regarding the Strait of Hormuz, maintaining instead that the passage should remain under Iranian control and that Iran should be permitted to levy fees on ships passing through it.
The standoff follows several days of U.S. airstrikes on Iranian targets, along with Iranian retaliatory attacks aimed at countries across the Middle East. The latest round of fighting began after Iran struck three ships in the strait earlier in the week.
In a Truth Social post Friday, Trump said the ceasefire was finished, though he added that the United States would keep pursuing negotiations. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi headed to Oman for further talks Saturday, one day after Qatari mediators made a separate trip to Iran to meet with officials as regional attacks continued.
Trump makes an online threat toward Iran
Trump wrote on his website that 1,000 “missiles 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.”
The U.S. president said he was responding to threats “to assassinate, or attempt to assassinate” him. During Khamenei’s funeral, mourners repeatedly held posters or banners calling for him to be killed along with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Iran war’s opening moments on Feb. 28 saw an airstrike that killed Khamenei, 86. Iran only buried Khamenei this week following a dayslong funeral ceremony that saw his body taken to cities in both Iran and Iraq.
Trump added in his post that the U.S. military would “completely decimate and destroy all areas of Iran — PRAISE BE TO ALLAH!”
Trump, repeatedly during the war and its uneasy ceasefire, has invoked the name of God in Arabic, as well as threatened to destroy Iran’s very civilization. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a nationwide advocacy group, has in the past criticized Trump’s “deranged mocking of Islam.”
The Strait of Hormuz is a major point of contention
U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe to reporters the state of play with Iran, said the resumption of strikes this week came after what they described as a rogue faction of Iranian hard-liners trying to sabotage the ceasefire between Tehran and Washington.
However, Iran has insisted its theocracy is unified after the war under the country’s new supreme leader.
The U.S. officials said Friday that Trump is giving U.S. negotiators limited time to reach a deal with Iran but, in a sign of the challenges ahead, they underscored that the president had a wide range of options if talks fall apart.
Moments before the U.S. officials spoke, however, Tehran’s diplomat at the United Nations told reporters that any activity in the Strait of Hormuz, including its opening or demining operations, “rests exclusively with Iran.”
Qatari mediators separately traveled to Iran to meet with officials on Friday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said.
Iran has said the strait must now be under its sole control and that vessels should begin paying fees to Tehran — even though the world has for decades considered it an international waterway. About a fifth of all traded oil and natural gas passed through the strait before the war began.
Iran’s grip on the strait during the conflict led to a global energy crisis, though oil prices have sharply dropped since wartime highs of $120 a barrel.
Middle East remains tense after attacks
After the U.S. wrapped up its latest strikes on Thursday, more attacks reportedly hit Iran, leaving questions about who else may be targeting the Islamic Republic. Israel didn’t claim them, meaning the Gulf Arab states may have launched them, likely as a means to deter Iran from attacking them again. Iran on Thursday retaliated for U.S. strikes by targeting Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait and Qatar.
The strikes in Iran over two days killed at least 17 people and wounded 115 others, Iranian Health Ministry spokesperson Hossein Kermanpour said.
Across the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, Araghchi is scheduled to meet with his counterpart in Oman. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told his country’s state broadcaster TRT that he believed “a solution can be reached” this weekend between Iran and Oman, which lie on opposite sides of the narrow waterway.
However, Araghchi on Saturday 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 did that in response to the attacks on ships in the strait.
“Reality check: There can only be mutual compliance,” Araghchi wrote on X.
The U.S. continues to urge mariners to travel on a southern route through Oman’s territorial waters to avoid Iranian waters and the commands of its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. That has angered Tehran and sparked the attacks in the strait.
US insists a nuclear deal will require Iran to turn over enriched uranium
The U.S. officials also told journalists that any deal on Iran’s nuclear program would require Tehran to turn over its stockpile of highly enriched uranium. That’s something Iran has repeatedly refused.
If the U.S. does not reach a deal with Iran to turn over its nuclear material, it has military options to ensure that it remains buried underground forever, the officials said. They did not detail those options.
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, despite the International Atomic Energy Agency saying the Islamic Republic is the only country in the world to enrich uranium so highly without a weapons program.
The officials also insisted that they would never reach a nuclear deal with Iran if it did not first stop its attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
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Price and Weissert reported from Washington. Sam Metz contributed reporting from Ramallah, West Bank.
