{"id":51501,"date":"2026-07-11T08:42:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T08:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/51501\/"},"modified":"2026-07-11T08:42:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T08:42:09","slug":"trump-threatens-iran-after-ayatollah-ali-khameneis-funeral-saw-calls-for-his-killing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/51501\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump threatens Iran after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s funeral saw calls for his killing"},"content":{"rendered":"

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) \u2014 U.S. President Donald Trump threatened Iran on Saturday after the funeral of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei<\/a> saw open calls for his killing, further underlining the tensions gripping the Middle East as an interim deal to end the war<\/a> buckles under repeated crossfire in the region.<\/p>\n

Trump made the comments on his Truth Social after senior U.S. officials demanded that Iran make a public statement saying the Strait of Hormuz<\/a> is open and that ships crossing the vital corridor won\u2019t be attacked any longer. <\/p>\n

So far, Tehran has not done so, instead insisting that the route remain under its control and that it be allowed to charge ships moving through it, upending decades of precedent that consider the strait an international waterway.<\/p>\n

There had been multiple days of U.S. airstrikes targeting Iran<\/a>, as well as Iranian retaliatory fire targeting nations across the Middle East. Those strikes had been sparked by Iran attacking three ships<\/a> in the strait earlier this week.<\/p>\n

Trump makes an online threat toward Iran<\/p>\n

A thousand \u201cmissiles are Locked and Loaded and aimed at the Islamic Republic of Iran, with thousands of more to immediately follow, should the Iranian Government act on its threat,\u201d Trump wrote on his website.<\/p>\n

The U.S. president said his threat was in response to threats \u201cto assassinate, or attempt to assassinate\u201d him. During Khamenei\u2019s funeral, mourners repeatedly held posters or banners<\/a> calling for him to be killed along with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. <\/p>\n

The Iran war\u2019s opening moments on Feb. 28 saw an airstrike that killed Khamenei<\/a>, 86. Iran only buried Khamenei this week following a dayslong funeral ceremony that saw his body taken to cities in both Iran and Iraq. <\/p>\n

Trump added in his post that the U.S. military would \u201ccompletely decimate and destroy all areas of Iran \u2014 PRAISE BE TO ALLAH!\u201d <\/p>\n

Trump, repeatedly during the war and its uneasy ceasefire, has invoked the name of God in Arabic, as well as threatened to destroy Iran\u2019s very civilization. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a nationwide advocacy group, has in the past criticized Trump\u2019s \u201cderanged mocking of Islam.\u201d <\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s comments come as the Strait of Hormuz is a major point of contention<\/p>\n

The U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe to reporters the state of play with Iran<\/a>, said the resumption of strikes this week came after what they described as a rogue faction of Iranian hard-liners trying to sabotage the ceasefire between Tehran and Washington. <\/p>\n

However, Iran has insisted its theocracy is unified after the war under the country\u2019s new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The U.S. officials said Friday that Trump is giving U.S. negotiators limited time to reach a deal with Iran, but, in a sign of the challenges ahead, they underscored that the president had a wide range of options if talks fall apart. <\/p>\n

Moments before the U.S. officials spoke, however, Tehran\u2019s diplomat at the United Nations told reporters that any activity in the Strait of Hormuz, including its opening or demining operations, \u201crests exclusively with Iran.\u201d <\/p>\n

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Qatari mediators separately traveled to Iran to meet with officials on Friday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said. <\/p>\n

Iran has said the strait must now be under its sole control and that vessels should begin paying fees to Tehran \u2014 even though the world has for decades considered it an international waterway. About a fifth of all traded oil and natural gas passed through the strait before the war began.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s grip on the strait during the conflict led to a global energy crisis, though oil prices have sharply dropped<\/a> since wartime highs of $120 a barrel. <\/p>\n

Middle East remains tense after attacks<\/p>\n

After the U.S. wrapped up its latest strikes on Thursday, more attacks reportedly hit Iran, leaving questions about who else may be targeting the Islamic Republic. Israel didn\u2019t claim them, meaning the Gulf Arab states may have launched them, likely as a means to deter Iran from attacking them again. Iran on Thursday retaliated for U.S. strikes by targeting Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait and Qatar. <\/p>\n

The strikes in Iran over two days killed at least 17 people and wounded 115 others, Iran\u2019s Health Ministry spokesperson Hossein Kermanpour said. <\/p>\n

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi traveled to Oman on Saturday to meet with his counterpart. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told his country\u2019s state broadcaster TRT that he believed \u201ca solution can be reached\u201d this weekend between Iran and Oman, which lie on opposite sides of the narrow waterway.<\/p>\n

However, Araghchi on Saturday accused the U.S. of violating the interim deal by ending waivers allowing Iran to sell crude oil on the open market in U.S. dollars. Washington did that in response to the attacks on ships in the strait. <\/p>\n

\u201cReality check: There can only be mutual compliance,\u201d Araghchi wrote on X. <\/p>\n

The U.S. continues to urge mariners to travel on a southern route through Oman\u2019s territorial waters to avoid Iranian waters and the commands of its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. That has angered Tehran and sparked the attacks in the strait. <\/p>\n

US insists a nuclear deal will require Iran to turn over enriched uranium<\/p>\n

The U.S. officials also told journalists that any deal on Iran\u2019s nuclear program would require Tehran to turn over its stockpile of highly enriched uranium<\/a>. That\u2019s something Iran has repeatedly refused. <\/p>\n

If the U.S. does not reach a deal with Iran to turn over its nuclear material, it has military options to ensure that it remains buried underground forever, the officials said. They did not detail those options.<\/p>\n

The uranium, enriched to near weapons-grade levels, is believed to be at nuclear sites the U.S. bombed in 2025. Iran long has insisted its nuclear program is peaceful, despite the International Atomic Energy Agency saying the Islamic Republic is the only country in the world to enrich uranium so highly without a weapons program. <\/p>\n

The officials also insisted that they would never reach a nuclear deal with Iran if it did not first stop its attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Price and Weissert reported from Washington. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) \u2014 U.S. President Donald Trump threatened Iran on Saturday after the funeral of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51502,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[1390,18,41,351,38,274,6828,227,50,28180,8,597,19,103,96,98,655,9,67,7,2531,100,226,106],"class_list":["post-51501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-top-stories","tag-abbas-araghchi","tag-ali-khamenei","tag-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-diplomacy","tag-donald-trump","tag-energy-industry","tag-esmail-baghaei","tag-funerals-and-memorial-services","tag-general-news","tag-hakan-fidan","tag-headlines","tag-international-agreements","tag-iran","tag-iran-government","tag-iran-war","tag-military-and-defense","tag-mojtaba-khamenei","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-top-stories","tag-trump-media-technology-group-corp","tag-united-states-government","tag-war-and-unrest","tag-world-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116900458992179174","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}