Trump Tweets as US Ramps up Pressure on Iran

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani seen here in 2013 at the Marble Palace in Tehran, Iran. Meghdad Madadi / Wikimedia Commons

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s explosive Twitter threat to Iran’s leader comes as his administration is ratcheting up a pressure campaign on the Islamic republic.

Trump’s bellicose, all-caps challenge late Sunday to President Hassan Rouhani followed a speech by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in which he accused Iran’s leadership of massive corruption and widespread rights abuses and urged Iranians to rise up in protest.

Both the tweet and the speech landed less than two weeks before the administration will begin re-imposing sanctions on Iran that had been lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal.

Trump tweeted Sunday that if Iran threatened the U.S. it would “SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE.”

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Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif responded Monday on Twitter, writing, “COLOR US UNIMPRESSED.”