By Ingrid "Shortwave" Frost
Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps said Tuesday it would change the geography of the war if the United States escalates its conflict with the Islamic Republic - a blunt reply to fresh threats from President Donald Trump.
In an interview with Fox News aired Sunday, Trump said he was weighing three options for dealing with Tehran: wiping Iran out, letting them rot economically, or making a deal. He added that very big things are going to be happening in the not-so-distant future, though he offered no specifics.
The exchange landed just as world leaders gather in New York for the UN General Assembly, where Iran's president, Masoud Pezeshkian, has been holding his own diplomacy on the sidelines, meeting Pakistan's interior minister, Mohsin Naqvi, in Tehran as Islamabad and Doha work to keep some channel open with Washington. It was Naqvi's sixth visit to Tehran, a sign of how much regional traffic is now built around managing this one relationship.
What we don't know matters as much as what we do. Trump did not detail what a strike, or a deal, would actually look like, and the Guard Corps statement was similarly light on specifics - a warning, not a battle plan. Readers should treat both as opening positions in a public argument, not settled facts about what happens next.
The stakes are plain enough without embellishment: an American president publicly floating the destruction of a nation of 90 million people, and that nation's most powerful military force promising to make any war bigger than intended. Whatever happens at the podium in New York this week, that exchange will be the subtext.
— Compiled from reporting by The Guardian.
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