Iran vowed today to hit US interests worldwide if it is attacked by the United States, which is keeping military options open in case diplomacy fails to curb Tehran's nuclear programme.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made the threat two days before the UN nuclear watchdog reports on whether Iran is meeting Security Council demands to halt uranium enrichment.
Tehran says it will not stop enrichment, which it insists is purely for civilian purposes and not part of what the United States says is a clandestine effort to make atomic bombs.
"The Americans should know that if they assault Iran their interests will be harmed anywhere in the world that is possible," Khamenei was quoted as saying by state television.
"The Iranian nation will respond to any blow with double the intensity," he added.
Iran's wargames in the Gulf this month were also widely seen as a veiled threat to a vital oil shipping route.
"The security of the Persian Gulf is very well tied up to the world's economic affairs and it would be quite natural for Iran not to sit idle vis-a-vis any military adventure," Iranian lawmaker Alaeddin Broujerdi told reporters in London.
Iran said yesterday it would suspend relations with the IAEA if sanctions were imposed. Diplomats said this could mean withdrawing from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today reiterated his view that Iran could review its NPT and IAEA commitments if it saw no dividends from abiding by international protocols.
"We hope they fulfil their duties and make it unnecessary for the Islamic Republic of Iran to reconsider its relations with them," Ahmadinejad said.
Although Iran says it bases its nuclear policy on the NPT, it pulled out of the treaty's Additional Protocol, which allows snap inspections of atomic facilities, in February after the IAEA referred its nuclear file to the Security Council.
Iran often complains it does not benefit from the NPT's entitlement to shared technology, but Western diplomats say it must prove its goals are peaceful to qualify for this.
The IAEA has said that after three years of investigation it still cannot confirm that Iran's aims are entirely peaceful, although it has found no hard proof of a military programme. The agency points to gaps in its information, such as the status of Iran's research into P-2 centrifuges that can enrich uranium faster than the P-1 units it now operates