Iran threatens to attack European air bases if Donald Trump restarts the war

Iran has threatened to target European air bases used by American forces if Donald Trump reignites the conflict in the Middle East.

Yesterday, Major General Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of Iran’s supreme national security council, warned Tehran would launch strikes on US bases, including against those previously thought to be out of their range.

The senior Islamic Republic official also said any renewed American attacks would be met with strikes on its "more distant military installations – including the ones we have not yet attacked".

He did not disclose which air bases could be under threat in the event of the war restarting.

“If American aircraft take off from an American military base, even one located in a European country or some other distant region, to bomb Iran, we will strike those bases as well," he told Lebanon-based Al Mayadeen TV.

Major General Rezaei also warned the Islamic Republic may "strike certain islands that they assume are beyond the reach of our missiles".

During the interview, he also outlined Tehran's demands for bringing the conflict to an end, including the release of frozen assets, the lifting of sanctions and an agreement which covers “all the fronts of West Asia, especially Lebanon”.

Other measures include the lifting of the American naval blockage in exchange for the re-opening of the Strait of Hormuz.

However, Major General Rezaei said Iran's nuclear programme was "not currently" part of negotiations, insisting Tehran would "not send even a tiny amount of the enriched material outside Iran".

He said the country's enriched uranium would be used to fuel ships and submarines in the future.

The senior Islamic Republic's remarks were echoed by Tehran's armed forces chief of staff, Major General Ali Abdollahi, who warned that the US and Israel face "far deadlier blows" should "any new miscalculation" be made.

“Any point that is a centre of threat against the existence of the Islamic Republic will be a direct target of asymmetric operations," he cautioned.

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Despite Tehran's warnings, the US President has indicated that he is not looking to escalate the war in the wake of his party's heavy losses in the midterm elections.

"I'm not looking to. I don't think there's any reason to," he told CBS News, claiming Iran's nuclear stockpile had been reduced to "nuclear dust".

Mr Trump said: "They have nothing. It's buried under thousands of tons of rocks at the end of this whole thing."

He also insisted the Strait of Hormuz was open, even though the few ships transiting the crucial waterway are being escorted by the US Navy.

On Tuesday, the US Department of Justice charged three suspected Iran-backed operatives with plotting a “campaign of terror” across Europe, including against the joint US-UK military base RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire.

Charges against Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al-Saadi, a dual Iranian-Iraqi national, Mohsen Mohajeri, an Iranian national, and Mohammad Ali al-Hassani, an Iraqi national, were outlined in a New York court.

In a statement, US Attorney Jamie McDonald claimed al-Saadi had coordinated with the other two suspects in prison in the days leading up to the alleged bomb plot at RAF Fairford on September 27.

Prosecutors claim al-Saadi attempted to pass coded messages to Mohajeri and al-Hassani via phone calls to relatives from prison in New York.

The eight-count superseding indictment charges the trio with terrorism-related offences linked to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Kata'ib Hizballah.