US refuses to rule out “attacks on Iran”

Speaking to NBC, Sullivan was asked repeatedly if the US was considering attacks inside Iran.

“Well, sitting here today on a national news programme, I’m not going to get into what we’ve ruled in and ruled out from the point of view of military action,” he said.

“What I will say is that the president is determined to respond forcefully to attacks on our people. The president also is not looking for a wider war in the Middle East.”

Pressed again on the question, he continued to avoid a direct answer.

“I’m not going to get into what’s on the table and off the table when it comes to the American response,” he added.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has stressed that Tehran will not start a war but will give a decisive and strong response to any adventurism seeking to bully the Islamic Republic.

“We have said many times that we will not be the initiator of any war, but if a country or a cruel force wants to bully the Islamic Republic of Iran, it will respond firmly,” Raisi said on Friday.

He added Iran’s military power does not pose any threat to the countries in West Asia but it is a source of security and stability that the regional states can rely on.

The US, along with the UK, launched strikes on Yemen’s Houthis overnight, hitting dozens of targets, just a day after they hit a number of groups in Syria and Iraq.

The attacks came in response to a drone strike on an American outpost in Jordan that killed three soldiers, which the US blamed on Iran-backed groups. Tehran has stressed that regional resistance groups do not take orders from Iran, nor does the Islamic Republic have a role in their decisions to carry out retaliatory operations in defense of Palestine.

Iran on Sunday warned that the strikes across the region appeared to “contradict” the stated desire by the leaders of the US and UK that the fighting in Gaza not expand into a regional war.

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman, Nasser Kanani, said in a statement that the attacks were “in clear contradiction with the repeated claims of Washington and London that they do not want the expansion of war and conflict in the region”.

He stressed the two countries were “fuelling chaos, disorder, insecurity and instability” by supporting Israel in its war in Gaza, which has so far left at least 27,300 people dead, according to the health ministry in Gaza.