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Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Esmail Baghaei reportedly defended the country’s attacks on U.S. military targets in the Middle East.
During an interview with CNBC, Baghei said that the Iranian attacks were on “legitimate targets” under the United Nations Charter’s Article 51, stating that the country was defending itself.
“All military bases, installations and assets that in any form or manner are being used to help the aggressors are regarded as legitimate targets,” Baghaei said during the interview.
This comes amid a warning from President Donald Trump that the U.S. would hit Iran with a force that is 20 times harder than its attacks on the Middle Eastern country so far, if it tried anything to stop the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz.
“If Iran does anything that stops the flow of Oil within the Strait of Hormuz, they will be hit by the United States of America TWENTY TIMES HARDER than they have been hit thus far,” President Trump stated in a post on Truth Social on Monday.

According to an Al Jazeera report, Iranian government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said that any mediation “must be in a condition where there is not only [a] ceasefire, but also a complete halt to attacks and an assurance that this will not happen again.”
She stated that Iranian people demand this assurance, adding that while Iran did not start this war, it will finish it.
Meanwhile, President Trump described the Iran war as a “short-term” one, according to a report by NBC News.
“We took a little excursion because we felt we had to do that to get rid of some evil. And I think you’ll see it’s going to be a short-term excursion. How good is our military, right? Amazing. How good? Short term. Short term,” he said.
The President added that the U.S. is very close to finishing this short-term excursion.
U.S. equities declined in Tuesday’s pre-market trade. At the time of writing, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY), which tracks the S&P 500 index, was down 0.17%; the Invesco QQQ Trust ETF (QQQ) fell 0.08%; and the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF Trust (DIA) declined 0.15%. Retail sentiment on Stocktwits regarding the S&P 500 ETF was in the ‘bearish’ territory.
The United States Oil Fund ETF (USO) was up 2.5%, and the ProShares Ultra Bloomberg Crude Oil ETF (UCO) was up 4.6% at the time of writing.
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