‘Region will be set on fire’

Tehran yesterday warned Washington that any attack would see its interests across the Middle East go up in flames as US President Donald Trump said he will impose additional sanctions against Iran in an effort to prevent it from obtaining nuclear weapons, adding that military action was still a possibility.

Trump, who was speaking to reporters at the White House, made his comments after recently calling off military action against Iran. The aborted military action was to have been in response to Iran’s downing of a US reconnaissance drone, which has seen tensions between the two countries soar after a series of attacks on oil tankers the US has blamed on Iran.

“Firing one bullet towards Iran will set fire to the interests of America and its allies” in the region, armed forces general staff spokesman Brigadier General Abolfazl Shekarchi told the Tasnim news agency.

“If the enemy -- especially America and its allies in the region -- make the military mistake of shooting the powder keg on which America’s interests lie, the region will be set on fire,” Shekarchi warned.

Trump said Friday that the United States was “cocked & loaded” to strike Iran but pulled back at the last minute as it would not have been a “proportionate” response to Tehran’s shooting down of an unmanned drone.

Under pressure to respond to the high-stakes incident near the strategic Strait of Hormuz, Trump said the US was prepared to hit “3 different sites” Thursday night but that he scrapped the strikes “10 minutes” before they were to have been launched.

“I asked, how many will die. 150 people, sir, was the answer from a General,” the president tweeted, saying he concluded it would not have been “proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone.”

According to excerpts of an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” conducted Friday morning at the White House, Trump said he had not given final approval to strikes against Iran, and that no planes were in the air.

“But they would have been pretty soon. And things would have happened to a point where you wouldn’t turn back or couldn’t turn back,” he said.

He added that he did not want war with Iran, but if it came to pass, there would be “obliteration like you’ve never seen before.”

The US president had struck a combative tone in initial comments Thursday about the downing of the Global Hawk surveillance aircraft, but as the pre-dawn incident whipped up fears of open conflict, Trump moved to dial back tensions.

Trump yesterday said that he would be Iran’s “best friend” and that the Islamic republic could be a “wealthy” country if it renounced nuclear weapons.

“We’re not going to have Iran have a nuclear weapon,” Trump told reporters outside the White House as he prepared to depart for Camp David for meetings on the situation with Iran, which downed a US drone earlier this week.

“Everyone was saying I’m a war-monger, and now they say I’m a dove,” Trump said Saturday as he was peppered with questions about the Iran drama.

“I think I am neither, if you want to know the truth. I’m a man with common sense, and that’s what we need in this country, is common sense.”

Tehran insists that the drone violated its airspace -- something Washington denies -- but was prepared to accept on Friday that it might have done so by accident.

The drone could have entered Iran’s airspace over a mistake by “a general or some operators,” the commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ aerospace arm, Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh told state news agency IRNA yesterday.

“Nonetheless, this was an act of trampling international aviation laws by a spy aircraft, which met our natural response,” Hajizadeh added.