Senior Iranian military and Revolutionary Guards officials issued a series of threats against the United States and Israel on Wednesday, including a pledge to kill their leaders and warnings of attacks on American bases in Europe and targets worldwide.
“We are determined to kill Trump and Netanyahu as long as we live,” Keyoumars Heydari, deputy chief of staff of Iran's armed forces, told state television, referring to US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Heydari also claimed that American forces had been driven out of the Persian Gulf and that US warships had retreated hundreds of kilometers from Iranian territory.
His remarks followed threats from senior Revolutionary Guards adviser Mohammadreza Naqdi, who said Iran's armed forces had received authorization from Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei to retaliate without geographical restrictions.
“If the enemy makes another wrong move and seeks to act aggressively again, it will certainly receive deadly blows in different parts of the world,” Naqdi said.
He was referring to Khamenei's October 31 instructions to military commanders to respond immediately to threats, expand their potential targets and disregard geographical limitations.
Iran's top security official, Mohsen Rezaei, meanwhile, threatened to extend retaliatory strikes beyond the Middle East if Washington resumed attacks.
“We may even target some American military bases in European countries,” Rezaei, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, told Lebanon's Al Mayadeen television.
He said American bases in Europe and on distant islands could become targets if US aircraft used them to attack Iran. The extent of Iran's ability to strike such distant locations remains uncertain.
Revolutionary Guards spokesman Hossein Mohebbi separately told the Guards-affiliated Tasnim news agency that Iran's aerospace forces had developed sufficient military capabilities to confront a global superpower and bring it to a standstill.
Mohebbi credited the late supreme leader Ali Khamenei and military commanders, particularly Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, regarded as the architect of Iran's ballistic missile program, for developing those capabilities.
The increasingly confrontational rhetoric accompanied continuing disagreements over negotiations with Washington.
Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf told Al Jazeera on Wednesday that Iran was determined to end its prolonged state between war and peace through sustained military deterrence, potentially without negotiations.
He said Washington had yet to formally respond to Tehran's seven conditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz and resuming talks.
The statements followed months of US-Israeli military operations and a continuing American naval blockade, with Tehran insisting on its conditions for ending the confrontation while Washington maintains economic and military pressure.
US President Donald Trump predicted Wednesday that the war with Iran would end soon, but Tehran rejected nuclear concessions and threatened US bases as far away as Europe, while Washington intensified economic pressure and tensions persisted in the Strait of Hormuz.
Speaking at a Veterans Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, Trump declared that US forces had already defeated Iran militarily and suggested Washington could decide when to end the conflict.
“We won. It’s just a question of when we end it,” Trump said.
“I want to make sure we have a total victory, not a 93 percent victory,” he added, predicting that the conflict would end soon.
Tehran, however, showed little willingness to accept Washington's terms. Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said Iran was determined to end its prolonged state between war and peace through military deterrence, potentially without negotiations.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, Ghalibaf said Washington had not formally responded to Tehran's seven conditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz and resuming talks. He insisted that those conditions must be fully implemented before either could proceed.
His remarks followed comments by President Masoud Pezeshkian on Monday that Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei had ordered an end to the country's “no war, no peace” situation. Pezeshkian said Iran could resolve the dispute through negotiations but would not yield to pressure.
The impasse extends to Iran's nuclear program, one of the central disputes between the two countries.
Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said Tehran would not transfer any of its enriched nuclear material abroad, rejecting a possible arrangement involving Russia.
“We have informed our Russian friends that the enriched material will remain in Iran, and we will use it ourselves,” Rezaei told Lebanon's pro-Hezbollah Al Mayadeen television.
Russia's Foreign Ministry said Wednesday that its offer to receive the material remained available, while emphasizing that Tehran alone would decide what happened to its stockpile.
The disagreement highlights the obstacles facing any diplomatic settlement, even as Pakistan continues efforts to mediate between Washington and Tehran.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who met Pezeshkian on the sidelines of the COP31 climate summit in Turkey, called for restraint and sustained diplomacy, saying negotiations offered the only path to lasting peace.
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that US Vice President JD Vance was considering face-to-face talks with Iran's Supreme National Security Council Secretary Mohsen Rezaei, citing US and Middle Eastern officials and people familiar with the negotiations.
Trump has authorized Vance to negotiate with Iran, according to the report. Vance sent Rezaei a letter in October requesting a meeting, but no date has been set, with Doha under consideration as a possible venue.
But prospects for direct talks appeared uncertain. Mehdi Mohammadi, an adviser to Ghalibaf, said Tehran had rejected a request from US Vice President JD Vance for direct negotiations before Washington delivered its final response to Iran's proposal.
The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, reported that Trump had privately questioned whether a Pakistan-brokered agreement reached in June had allowed Tehran to regroup before the United States imposed its naval blockade.
With negotiations stalled, Washington is seeking to intensify the economic pressure already imposed through maritime restrictions and sanctions.
The New York Times reported Wednesday that US officials had spent weeks unsuccessfully pressing Iran's neighbors, particularly Iraq, Turkey and Pakistan, to restrict trade across their land borders.
The effort gained a new dimension with the establishment of Task Force Iron Gate, a US Central Command initiative aimed at disrupting the movement of weapons, sanctioned goods and illicit revenue across Iran's land borders and the Caspian Sea.
But neighboring governments have resisted measures that could damage their own economies and provoke unrest in communities dependent on cross-border trade.
According to the Times, Iraq rejected a US request to close all but two crossings with Iran, while Turkey has largely declined to change its border policies.
The Group of Seven foreign ministers pledged Wednesday to maintain economic and political pressure if diplomacy failed to address Iran's nuclear program and regional security concerns.
Iran's response has combined diplomatic resistance with increasingly expansive military threats.
Rezaei warned Wednesday that any US military base involved in a renewed war against Iran could be targeted, including facilities in Europe.
“NO SAFE DISTANCE. NO SAFE HAVEN. NO IMMUNITY,” he wrote on X.
Other senior Iranian military figures issued similar warnings. Deputy armed forces chief Keyoumars Heydari said Iran had prepared an expanded list of potential targets beyond the Middle East, while Revolutionary Guards adviser Mohammadreza Naghdi said the armed forces had authorization to retaliate without geographical restrictions.
Mohammadi, the adviser to Ghalibaf, also warned that Iran could consider preemptive military action if Washington continued tightening economic pressure. He claimed the United States was preparing for a limited strike, although there was no independent confirmation of such a plan.
An adviser to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei also warned that countries helping enforce a blockade against Iran could be treated as participants in an act of war.
Those threats came as the Strait of Hormuz remained a flashpoint, complicating efforts to restore commercial shipping and energy exports from the Persian Gulf.
Reuters reported Wednesday, citing three sources familiar with the matter, that Iran had attacked navigation infrastructure on Oman's Didamar island used to support shipping through the waterway. The extent of any damage was unclear.
Iran's navy also said a tanker had caught fire after striking a mine east of the strait, describing the area as unsafe and restricted and urging shipowners to coordinate passage with Iranian forces.
Tehran's rhetoric toward Washington is hardening, with senior Iranian officials threatening US military bases in Europe and commentators on state television calling for a complete closure of the Strait of Hormuz to force American concessions.
The increasingly confrontational language comes as Iran faces a continuing US naval blockade and uncertainty over whether the two countries can reach an agreement to end the war.
Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, warned Wednesday that Tehran could target US military bases in Europe and on distant islands if Washington attacked Iran again.
During a November 10 discussion on the state broadcaster's nightly talk show Be Vaght-e Iran, three analysts argued that Iran should use the Strait of Hormuz to drive up oil prices, deter further US attacks and pressure Washington to accept Tehran's terms for ending the war.
Nima Akbarkhani, a political and military analyst and regular panelist, argued that the United States would launch another war only after bringing oil prices down as far as possible, allowing it to contain the resulting increase once hostilities began.
He rejected the argument that a tighter closure of the Strait of Hormuz, or an Iranian attempt to break the US naval blockade, could prompt President Donald Trump to launch a full-scale war.
“We must definitely go after the blockade militarily. We must recognize that a blockade is a military action and demands a military response,” Akbarkhani said.
“Americans are monitoring the situation, and if it serves their interests, war will happen. We must do something to make it work against their interests.”
He argued that Washington had limited its military response even after US personnel were killed during the earlier war over Hormuz.
Yousef Azizi, an international relations and Middle East analyst, said Iran should keep oil prices high by closing the strait to deter another US attack.
Azizi also urged Iran's diplomatic apparatus to avoid releasing information that could drive oil prices down, including reports of possible meetings with officials from Iraq and Gulf Cooperation Council countries.
His remarks followed a denial by Rezaei of reports about a possible meeting with US Vice President JD Vance in Qatar and claims that negotiations with Washington were continuing.
In an interview with Al Mayadeen on Tuesday, Rezaei called the reports “completely false and a lie,” arguing that American claims about ongoing negotiations were intended to “reduce economic pressure and bring down oil prices.”
Azizi said Washington appeared to have concluded that it could not achieve its objectives through war. He considered a cycle of limited clashes, temporary ceasefires and interim understandings more likely than either side accepting all the other's demands.
Vahid Khazab, another regular analyst on Be Vaght-e Iran, said the costs of war could push the US and global economies into a deep recession and damage Trump's legacy.
An agreement, however, would require Washington to accept Iran's preconditions for ending the war and beginning nuclear negotiations, he said.
“More precisely, there is no unity, consensus or even a majority within the ruling camp in the United States in favor of making such concessions,” Khazab said.
Of three possible scenarios — war, an agreement ending the conflict, or continued economic pressure and a naval blockade — Khazab considered the third the most likely because it was the least costly option for Washington.
He argued that Iran should therefore close the Strait of Hormuz completely, denying Washington the option of maintaining economic pressure while some energy supplies continued to pass through.
Rather than focusing solely on raising oil prices, Khazab said Tehran should seek to influence market expectations about future supplies. A complete closure would prevent Trump from signaling that the strait might soon reopen, encouraging expectations of a return to normal traffic.
“Of course, this will also be reflected in prices, albeit with some delay,” he added.
He also argued that a tighter closure would prompt regional countries to pressure Washington to reach a resolution favorable to Tehran, without Iran having to attack their infrastructure.
Khazab said Tehran should present Washington with a stark choice: “Your only option is to reach an agreement with me and accept my seven conditions. If we want to get to this point, the way to do it is to close the strait.”
Iran would strike US bases in Europe and on distant islands if the United States attacks again, the country’s top security official said, warning countries that host American forces that any base involved in an attack would become a target.
“If the Americans make a mistake and attack us, we will not limit ourselves to nearby bases,” Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, told the Beirut-based channel Al Mayadeen, which is aligned with Hezbollah and Tehran.
“We may even target some American military bases in European countries.”
Iran might also hit “some islands they think our missiles cannot reach,” he said, and he advised every country that hosts US forces not to cooperate with an attack. “Wherever American planes take off from, we will regard it as a threat against us.”
Rezaei also said Vladimir Putin had told him, when they met in the Kremlin, that he had informed the Americans that the Islamic Republic “is not a system that can be toppled.”
The threat marks another step up in what Tehran says it is prepared to hit. In the 12-day war of June 2025, Rezaei said, Iran limited its strikes to Israel. In the war that began on February 28 it fired on US bases across the region. Now its officials name Europe.
Last month, Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei ordered the armed forces to prepare for retaliation without geographic limits, according to a statement attributed to him. The army’s spokesman said a new war could spread “beyond West Asia,” and the hardline daily Kayhan listed US and NATO facilities in Cyprus, Greece, Romania, Albania, Italy and Britain, and the joint US-British base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
Whether Iran can reach them is less clear. The Center for Strategic and International Studies lists Iran’s main ballistic missiles with ranges of about 2,000 kilometers, with some variants reaching perhaps 3,000. Britain’s Royal United Services Institute has said a strike as far as the UK is theoretically possible, with smaller and less accurate warheads flying through defended airspace.
The warning comes days after the US military moved tankers and aircraft out of RAF Mildenhall in eastern England over a threat from Iran, and weeks after it withdrew bombers from RAF Fairford following a suspected Iran-linked plot.
Rezaei denied that Tehran was talking to Washington, contradicting reports this week of progress in Qatari mediation.
“We are not negotiating with the Americans at present, and there are no negotiations between us and the United States,” he said.
Reports of a meeting in Qatar, or of plans for him to meet Vice President JD Vance, were “lies,” he said, meant to ease economic pressure and bring down oil prices. Asked directly about a meeting with Vance, he said: “Absolutely not.”
Iran has set seven conditions, he said, and the Strait of Hormuz will stay closed until they are met. Washington’s first reply had been “deceptive.” The first condition is an end to the war on all fronts, especially Lebanon.
He said the nuclear issue was not on the table, and that “not even a particle” of Iran’s enriched uranium would leave the country. Tehran had told Moscow the same, he said, adding that Iran was designing nuclear-powered ships and submarines and might build small modular reactors, and needed the material for them.
Rezaei also said both sides had signed an agreement during an earlier round of talks in Islamabad, and that Trump had torn it up within a month. Washington has not confirmed that account.
Rezaei said Iran had recently taken control of US drones in flight through electronic warfare and brought seven down intact, and had captured two underwater craft able to dive to 6,000 meters. He gave no details, and none of the claims could be independently verified.
Asked about the health of Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not appeared in public since succeeding his father in March, Rezaei did not answer directly.
He said that when they last met, and he prayed behind him, he found him better informed about the country “even than me,” and that he issues instructions to military commanders.
Rezaei said he had carried a message from Mojtaba Khamenei to Putin, mostly on continuing cooperation, and that they had discussed the North-South trade corridor and piping Russian gas, no longer sold to Europe, into Iran for its own use and resale to its neighbors.
The Revolutionary Guards' unveiling of a new underground missile facility has sparked public anger over military spending, with citizens questioning government priorities amid growing poverty, energy shortages and a lack of civilian shelters.
Iranian media released images on November 10 showing Ali Abdollahi, chief of staff of the armed forces, and Majid Mousavi, commander of the Revolutionary Guards' Aerospace Force, touring what was described as a new underground "missile city."
Neither the facility's location nor the date of the officials' visit was disclosed.
"They have drilled holes into mountains for missile cities, but they have left even bigger holes in people's dinner tables," a resident of Shiraz wrote to Iran International.
Another criticized the focus on expanding missile capabilities rather than addressing economic hardship.
"They either inaugurate missile cities or compete to threaten the region, Europe and the US. The only thing that does not matter to them is the people and their problems," the person wrote.
The unveiling followed remarks by lawmaker Ghasem Ravanbakhsh on November 7 calling for longer-range missiles and discussing the potential ability to target military bases and infrastructure in European countries, including Britain.
Missile facilities and shrinking household budgets
Several citizens questioned the allocation of resources to underground military infrastructure while living standards continue to deteriorate.
"Now we know where the money meant for people's livelihoods is being spent," one person wrote.
Another compared Iran's growing missile infrastructure and the Revolutionary Guards' influence to North Korea, pointing to declining household purchasing power and economic hardship.
Year-on-year inflation reached 88.7 percent in October, the Statistical Center of Iran announced on October 28.
"Regional power and strength are not demonstrated by unveiling missile cities, but by providing people with essential goods and fuel so they do not face shortages," another wrote.
Others questioned the construction and operating costs of underground facilities, including their electricity and gas consumption.
One person estimated construction costs at $50 million per kilometer and questioned why households were being urged to conserve energy while military facilities consumed substantial resources.
The criticism coincided with fresh government warnings about possible winter gas shortages.
Iran faces a gas supply shortfall of approximately 430 million cubic meters, government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said on November 10, warning of possible interruptions and urging households to reduce consumption.
Some respondents also accused the Revolutionary Guards of controlling access to foreign currency and import permits through affiliated companies, arguing that resources needed for food and medicine were being directed toward missile development and regional allied groups.
Underground missile bases but no public shelters
Another major concern raised by the citizens was the lack of civilian shelters and emergency protection facilities in the event of war.
"I wish that instead of unveiling missile cities, you would unveil underground shelters for the people. Everything matters to the Islamic Republic except the lives of Iranians," a resident of Karaj wrote.
The criticism follows an Iran International report published on November 3 examining civilian preparedness for possible conflict.
Many said they could neither afford emergency supplies nor identify a safe place to shelter during military strikes.
Some also questioned the government's decision to publicize images of facilities presumed to be sensitive military sites while providing no recent images of Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei.
They contrasted the publicity surrounding underground missile infrastructure with the continued absence of new public images of the country's leader.
Iran designated Argentina’s navy and air force as terrorist organizations on Wednesday, invoking a 2019 law on reciprocal action after Buenos Aires designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) as a terrorist organization.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry said Argentina’s move was hostile and violated fundamental principles of international law. It said the 2019 law, adopted after the United States designated the IRGC as a terrorist organization, applies to countries that follow or support that US decision.
“All countries that in any way follow or support the US decision to designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization will be subject to reciprocal action,” the ministry quoted the law as saying.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry said the Argentine government would bear responsibility for “all consequences arising from this action.”
Argentina designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization on March 31, broadening a years-long effort by Buenos Aires to hold Tehran and its proxies responsible for the deadliest attacks in the country’s history.
President Javier Milei’s office said Argentina had added the IRGC to its public registry of individuals and entities linked to terrorism and its financing, a move that allows financial sanctions and operational restrictions.
The United States was the first to designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization, adding it to its Foreign Terrorist Organizations list in 2019. Canada listed the entire corps as a terrorist entity under its Criminal Code in 2024. The European Union also added it to its terrorist list in February 2026.
Other governments have used different legal categories. Australia listed the IRGC as a “state sponsor of terrorism” in November 2025, while Britain designated it as a threat to national security in July 2026 under its State Threats Act.
Argentina tied its decision directly to the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, which killed 29 people and wounded more than 200, and the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center, which killed 85 people and wounded more than 300.
The announcement also renewed attention on Ahmad Vahidi, the IRGC chief commander and former Iranian defense minister, who has long been sought by Argentine authorities over the AMIA case.
At the time, Vahidi was the head of the Quds Force, the external operations branch of Iran's sprawling paramilitary organization the Islamic Revolutionary Guards.
Following an international arrest warrant issued by Argentine judicial authorities in 2006, Interpol placed him on its wanted list the following year.
