Iran
IraniStock

Iranian government spokesman Ali Rabiei warned on Tuesday that any US attack on Iran would face a “crushing” response, Reuters reports.

“Any action against the Iranian nation would certainly face a crushing response,” Rabiei said in remarks streamed on an official government website.

“I personally don’t foresee that it’s probable that they (the United States) would want to cause insecurity in the world and the region,” he added.

The comments followed a New York Times report on Monday which said that US President Donald Trump asked senior advisers last week whether he had options to take action against Iran’s main nuclear site in the coming weeks.

The report said that a range of senior advisers dissuaded the president from moving ahead with a military strike, warning him that such a move could easily escalate into a broader conflict in the last weeks of his presidency.

The Trump administration has regularly enforced sanctions on Iran since 2018, when it withdrew from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, and has ramped up the sanctions in recent weeks, after its efforts to extend a UN arms embargo on Iran did not succeed.

President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to reverse Trump’s decision and rejoin the 2015 deal if Iran returns to compliance with it, though officials have estimated that sanctions targeting Iran would persist into Biden’s administration.