Any new US strike against Iran will be considered an act of “all-out war”, a senior Iranian official warned on Friday.
“This time, we take any attack – limited, unlimited, surgical, kinetic, whatever they call it – as an all-out war against us, and we will respond the hardest way possible,” the official told a group of reporters in New York.
The official's comments came after US President Donald Trump said an “armada” was on its way to the Middle East and as tensions soar with Tehran after Iran's deadly crackdown on anti-government protesters.
Mr Trump said he hoped he would not have to use it, renewing warnings to Tehran against killing protesters or restarting its nuclear programme.
Iran has been rocked by weeks of protests that erupted on December 28, with sharply conflicting accounts over the death toll.
The Iranian official said about 3,000 people had been killed, including roughly 600 police officers and security personnel whom he described as “martyred.”
However, the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) which relies on a network of activists inside Iran to verify casualties, reported that more than 4,700 demonstrators had been killed and that about 27,600 people had been detained.
Iranian authorities on Wednesday released their first official toll from the violence, saying 3,117 people had been killed. Of those, 2,427 were civilians and members of the security forces, while the rest were described as “terrorists.”
Tehran has accused foreign-backed groups of fomenting the unrest.
"There were individuals who infiltrated Iran after being recruited and trained in ISIS-controlled areas, in some cases receiving training there before being transferred into the country," he said.
Dozens of suspected foreign fighters are alleged to have been detained, some of whom were believed to have trained in Syria.
In June, Israel and Iran engaged in a 12-day conflict that ended with a US strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. The conflict was mostly contained to Iran and Israel, with the exception being an Iranian strike on a US base in Qatar.
During the June attacks, efforts were made to avoid escalation into the Arabian Gulf, neighbouring states and key energy infrastructure. Those self-imposed limits would likely no longer apply if Iran were attacked again.
