Trump warns Iran of severe retaliation if US attacked

WASHINGTON

President Donald Trump threatened late Monday to deliver a devastating response to any attack by Iran against the US.

"Any attack by Iran, in any form, against the United States will be met with an attack on Iran that will be 1,000 times greater in magnitude!" Trump said on Twitter.

He said Tehran may be plotting an attack or assassination in response to the US killing of top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, citing press reports.

In his tweet, Trump once again defended his decision to order the killing, saying it was carried out "for his planning a future attack, murdering U.S. Troops, and the death & suffering caused over so many years."

Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, was killed in early January in a US drone strike in Baghdad, Iraq.