An Iranian official said that Iran's “missile capabilities and defense are not containable or permission-based,” after the United States President Donald Trump warned the Islamic Republic about their current armament objectives during a press conference with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday.
“Under Iran’s defense doctrine, responses are set before threats materialize. Iran’s missile capabilities and defense are not containable or permission-based,” said Ali Shamkhani, a political advisor of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
“Any aggression will face an immediate harsh response beyond its planners’ imagination,” warned Shamkhani, who also works as Khamenei’s representative on the Iranian Defense Council.
The message was posted in several languages, including Hebrew, Russian, Arabic, Farsi, English, and Chinese.
The comments came after President Trump said that “Iran may be behaving badly. Because it has not been confirmed, but if it is, the consequences will be more severe than last time.”
Trump warns Iran against rebuilding their missile stock
On the Iran topic, the US president assured that they are ready to strike Iran again if necessary. “I hear that Iran is trying to build up again, and if they are, we’re going to have to knock them down,” he said ahead of the meeting. “We’ll knock them down. We’ll knock the hell out of them.”
According to the US president, the Iranian regime is working to rebuild its nuclear program, with new sites that were not hit, but it's still “far from getting back to what they had before the strikes.”
He also said the Iranian people were unhappy, their economy is bad, and the regime “starts shooting people” every time there is some form of resistance.
Finally, he added that he would prefer not to strike Iran if possible, assuring that “he doesn’t want to waste the B-2’s fuel on that.”
Danielle Greyman-Kennard, Amichai Stein, and Reuters contributed to this report.