Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi yesterday issued the most direct threat yet against the US after Tehran’s bloody crackdown on protesters, warning that the nation would be “firing back with everything we have if we come under renewed attack.”
The comments by Araghchi, who saw his invitation to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, rescinded over the killings, came as a US aircraft carrier group sails westward toward the Middle East from Asia.
US fighter jets and other equipment appears to be moving in the Middle East after a major US military deployment in the Caribbean saw troops seize deposed Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro.
Photo: AFP
Araghchi made the threat in an opinion article published by the Wall Street Journal.
In it, he said that “the violent phase of the unrest lasted less than 72 hours” and blamed armed demonstrators for the violence.
Videos that have slipped out of Iran despite an Internet shutdown appear to show security forces repeatedly using live fire to target apparently unarmed protesters, something unaddressed by Araghchi.
“Unlike the restraint Iran showed in June 2025, our powerful armed forces have no qualms about firing back with everything we have if we come under renewed attack,” Araghchi wrote, referring to the 12-day war launched by Israel on Iran in June. “This isn’t a threat, but a reality I feel I need to convey explicitly, because as a diplomat and a veteran, I abhor war.”
“An all-out confrontation will certainly be ferocious and drag on far, far longer than the fantasy timelines that Israel and its proxies are trying to peddle to the White House,” he said. “It will certainly engulf the wider region and have an impact on ordinary people around the globe.”
Araghchi’s comments likely refer to Iran’s short and medium-range missiles.
The death toll from the protests has reached at least 4,519 people, the Washington-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said.
The death toll exceeds that of any other round of protest or unrest in Iran in decades, and recalls the chaos surrounding the 1979 revolution that brought the Islamic Republic into being.
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