Furious comments issued by President Donald Trump over the weekend prompted a swift and aggressive response from Iran, while Russian President Vladimir Putin remains tight-lipped in the face of the U.S. leader’s ire.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, issued a warning on Monday and said it would respond ‘decisively and immediately’ to any threat issued by the U.S. after Trump said there ‘will be bombing’ and likely more tariffs if Tehran does not agree to a nuclear deal with Washington.
‘The enmity from the U.S. and Israel has always been there. They threaten to attack us, which we don’t think is very probable, but if they commit any mischief, they will surely receive a strong reciprocal blow,’ Khamenei said according to a Reuters report.
‘And if they are thinking of causing sedition inside the country as in past years, the Iranian people themselves will deal with them,’ he added.
Despite Iran’s refusal and warning directed at both the U.S. and Israel, Behnam Ben Taleblu, an Iran expert and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said Khamenei’s comments are an attempt to ‘buy time’ while balancing growing external and internal pressures on his regime.
‘At once, Khamenei sought to both downplay the chances of President Trump or Israel taking military action while also looking to deter such an eventuality due to the regime’s own policies,’ he told Fox News Digital. ‘This is a tightrope Khamenei will increasingly be forced to walk as he plays for time and engages in nuclear escalation.
‘U.S. policy should be to keep Khamenei off balance,’ he added.
While Iran takes an offensive stance against Trump and his ambitions to finally bring Tehran to heel on its nuclear expansion, Russia is taking a different approach as it refuses to bow to Trump’s plans to see an end to the war in Ukraine.
Over the weekend, Trump said he was ‘pissed off’ over comments made by Putin on Friday when he suggested the work Washington was doing to negotiate a ceasefire with Russia and Ukraine was moot because he believes the government in Kyiv to be illegitimate and therefore cannot sign any deals.
‘If Russia and I are unable to make a deal on stopping the bloodshed in Ukraine, and if I think it was Russia’s fault … I am going to put secondary tariffs on oil, on all oil coming out of Russia,’ Trump said, noting that tariffs could be as high as 50%.
The president later said his ire could ‘dissipate quickly’ if Putin ‘does the right thing,’ and once again noted he has ‘a very good relationship with [Putin].’
However, the Kremlin chief, who reportedly has another call scheduled with Trump this week, has not responded to Trump’s heated comments.
The chief spokesman for Putin, Dmitry Peskov, said on Monday that Russia will continue to work on ‘restoring’ relations with Washington that he said were ‘damaged by the Biden administration’ following Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, and noted that Putin remains in ‘open contact’ with Trump.
However, Putin’s lack of public response and the toned-down statements from the Kremlin are all part of Putin’s broader strategy, former DIA intelligence officer and Russia expert, Rebekah Koffler, told Fox News Digital.
‘Putin, like Trump, thrives on confrontation,’ Koffler said. ‘Except his approach is different. The Kremlin deliberately is projecting that Putin is cool, calm, and collected now, which he is.
‘The fact that President Trump reportedly got mad and used those words means to Putin that he finally got to him, the way he got to Biden, Obama, and others who called him a killer and other derogatory words,’ she continued.
‘Putin now feels that not only Russia has an upper hand on the battlefield over Ukraine and in terms of total combat potential over NATO, but he also was able to unbalance Trump,’ Koffler explained. ‘That is the whole point – it’s a judo move.’