FILE PHOTO: Servicemen attend the annual multinational crisis response training SABER GUARDIAN 23 HOSPEX with a medical focus, at the U.S. Air Force Base in Ramstein, Germany, June 6, 2023.
Iran would strike US bases in Europe and on distant islands if the United States attacks again, the country’s top security official said, warning countries that host American forces that any base involved in an attack would become a target.
“If the Americans make a mistake and attack us, we will not limit ourselves to nearby bases,” Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, told the Beirut-based channel Al Mayadeen, which is aligned with Hezbollah and Tehran.
“We may even target some American military bases in European countries.”
Iran might also hit “some islands they think our missiles cannot reach,” he said, and he advised every country that hosts US forces not to cooperate with an attack. “Wherever American planes take off from, we will regard it as a threat against us.”
Rezaei also said Vladimir Putin had told him, when they met in the Kremlin, that he had informed the Americans that the Islamic Republic “is not a system that can be toppled.”
A widening target list
The threat marks another step up in what Tehran says it is prepared to hit. In the 12-day war of June 2025, Rezaei said, Iran limited its strikes to Israel. In the war that began on February 28 it fired on US bases across the region. Now its officials name Europe.
Last month, Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei ordered the armed forces to prepare for retaliation without geographic limits, according to a statement attributed to him. The army’s spokesman said a new war could spread “beyond West Asia,” and the hardline daily Kayhan listed US and NATO facilities in Cyprus, Greece, Romania, Albania, Italy and Britain, and the joint US-British base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
Whether Iran can reach them is less clear. The Center for Strategic and International Studies lists Iran’s main ballistic missiles with ranges of about 2,000 kilometers, with some variants reaching perhaps 3,000. Britain’s Royal United Services Institute has said a strike as far as the UK is theoretically possible, with smaller and less accurate warheads flying through defended airspace.
The warning comes days after the US military moved tankers and aircraft out of RAF Mildenhall in eastern England over a threat from Iran, and weeks after it withdrew bombers from RAF Fairford following a suspected Iran-linked plot.
‘There are no negotiations’
Rezaei denied that Tehran was talking to Washington, contradicting reports this week of progress in Qatari mediation.
“We are not negotiating with the Americans at present, and there are no negotiations between us and the United States,” he said.
Reports of a meeting in Qatar, or of plans for him to meet Vice President JD Vance, were “lies,” he said, meant to ease economic pressure and bring down oil prices. Asked directly about a meeting with Vance, he said: “Absolutely not.”
Iran has set seven conditions, he said, and the Strait of Hormuz will stay closed until they are met. Washington’s first reply had been “deceptive.” The first condition is an end to the war on all fronts, especially Lebanon.
He said the nuclear issue was not on the table, and that “not even a particle” of Iran’s enriched uranium would leave the country. Tehran had told Moscow the same, he said, adding that Iran was designing nuclear-powered ships and submarines and might build small modular reactors, and needed the material for them.
Rezaei also said both sides had signed an agreement during an earlier round of talks in Islamabad, and that Trump had torn it up within a month. Washington has not confirmed that account.
Rezaei said Iran had recently taken control of US drones in flight through electronic warfare and brought seven down intact, and had captured two underwater craft able to dive to 6,000 meters. He gave no details, and none of the claims could be independently verified.
The unseen leader
Asked about the health of Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not appeared in public since succeeding his father in March, Rezaei did not answer directly.
He said that when they last met, and he prayed behind him, he found him better informed about the country “even than me,” and that he issues instructions to military commanders.
Rezaei said he had carried a message from Mojtaba Khamenei to Putin, mostly on continuing cooperation, and that they had discussed the North-South trade corridor and piping Russian gas, no longer sold to Europe, into Iran for its own use and resale to its neighbors.
Source: https://www.iranintl.com/en/202611117765
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