DUBAI: Iran said on Monday that US and Israeli threats against it were a blatant violation of international law and that they could not “do a damn thing” to hurt Tehran.

The comments came after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Jerusalem on Sunday and said their countries were determined to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions and its influence in the Middle East.

Netanyahu said Israel had dealt a “mighty blow” to Iran since the start of the conflict in Gaza and that with the support of US President Donald Trump “I have no doubt we can and will finish the job”.

Speaking at a weekly press conference on Monday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei responded: “When it comes to a country like Iran, they cannot do a damn thing.”

“You cannot threaten Iran on one hand and claim to support dialogue on the other hand,” Baghaei said, state media reported.

Trump has expressed an openness to a deal with Tehran while also reinstating the “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran that was applied during his first term to stop Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

While stopping short of renewing a ban on direct talks with Washington decreed in 2018, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has criticised Trump’s previous administration for not honouring its promises.

In 2018, Trump pulled the US out of Tehran’s 2015 nuclear pact with world powers and reimposed sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy.

A year later, Iran reacted by breaching the pact’s nuclear curbs, accelerating enrichment of uranium to up to 60 per cent purity, close to the roughly 90pc of weapons-grade. It says its nuclear programme is solely for peaceful purposes.

Despite spokesman Baghaei’s defiant words, Tehran’s influence throughout the region has weakened severely with its regional allies — known as the “Axis of Resistance” — either dismantled or badly hurt since the start of the Hamas-Israel conflict in Gaza and the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria in December.

The Axis includes not only Hamas but also Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and various Shia armed groups in Iraq and Syria.

Published in Dawn, February 18th, 2025