TEHRAN, Iran — A prominent Iranian cleric on Friday threatened two Israeli cities with destruction if the Jewish state “acts foolishly” and attacks its interests again, while thousands of protesters demonstrated against President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear deal with world powers.
The comments by Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami followed a week of escalating tensions that threaten to spill over into a wider conflict between the two bitter enemies, who have long fought each other through proxies in Syria and Lebanon.
Israeli airstrikes struck Iranian military installations inside Syria on Thursday — its biggest coordinated assault on Syria since the 1973 Mideast war — in retaliation for an Iranian rocket barrage on Israeli positions in the occupied Golan Heights. It was the most serious military confrontation between the two rivals to date.
Khatami, who has echoed sentiments of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei who says Israel will not exist in 25 years, said the Jewish state could face destruction if it continues to challenge Iran.
“The holy system of the Islamic Republic will step up its missile capabilities day by day so that Israel, this occupying regime, will become sleepless and the nightmare will constantly haunt it that if it does anything foolish, we will raze Tel Aviv and Haifa to the ground,” he said, according to state television.
WASHINGTON — The United States aspires to have North Korea as a “close partner” and not an enemy, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Friday, noting that the U.S. has often in history become good friends with former adversaries.
Pompeo said he had told North Korean leader Kim Jong Un of that hope during his brief visit to Pyongyang earlier this week, during which he finalized details of the upcoming June 12 summit between Kim and President Donald Trump and secured the release of three Americans imprisoned in the country.
He said his talks with Kim on Wednesday had been “warm,” “constructive,” and “good” and that he made clear that if North Korea gets rid of its nuclear weapons in a permanent and verifiable way, the U.S. is willing to help the impoverished nation boost its economy and living standards to levels like those in prosperous South Korea.
“We had good conversations about the histories of our two nations, the challenges that we have had between us,” Pompeo told reporters at a news conference with South Korea’s visiting foreign minister Kang Kyung-wha. “We talked about the fact that America has often in history had adversaries who we are now close partners with and our hope that we could achieve the same with respect to North Korea.”
He did not mention other adversaries by name, but Pompeo and others have often noted that the U.S. played a major role in rebuilding Japan and the European axis powers in the wake of the Second World War.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House on Friday declined to condemn comments made by a special assistant to President Donald Trump dismissing Sen. John McCain’s opinion during a closed-door meeting because, she said, “he’s dying anyway.”
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters she would not comment on an internal staff meeting, but said that Kelly Sadler, the aide in question, remains a White House staffer. “I’m not going to validate a leak out of an internal staff meeting one way or the other,” she said.
Sadler was discussing McCain’s opposition to Trump’s pick for CIA director, Gina Haspel, at a communications staff meeting on Thursday when she said that, “it doesn’t matter” because “he’s dying anyway,” two people in the room confirmed to The Associated Press.
The people, who were not authorized to discuss internal deliberations and spoke to AP on condition of anonymity, described feeling shocked and stunned by the remark. The comment was first reported by The Hill newspaper.
From Associated Press