Rezaei Warns Iran Will Strike Distant U.S. Bases If Attacked

The warning came in a televised interview with Lebanon’s Al Mayadeen, carried on Wednesday by Iranian outlets including Mehr News Agency. Mohsen Rezaei, a former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, has served as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council since August.

“If the Americans make a mistake and attack us, we will not confine ourselves only to targeting nearby bases; we will target all nearby bases and also attack America’s distant bases,” he said. “I mean U.S. military bases in distant areas that we have not yet attacked.”

Distant Bases, Islands and Europe

Rezaei said Iran might also strike “some islands they think our missiles cannot reach.” He added that U.S. bases in European countries could be hit if American aircraft took off from them to bomb Iran.

Tehran has previously been reported to be weighing strikes on U.S. military facilities in Europe if the war escalates. Rezaei said any site from which U.S. aircraft departed would be treated as a threat, and he advised countries that host American bases not to cooperate in a new attack on Iran.

“Our defensive and offensive capabilities are now much greater than on the first day of the war,” he said.

Bases Already in Range

Rezaei said Iran had limited itself during an earlier, shorter phase of the conflict and had not then struck U.S. bases in the region. He said those restrictions were later lifted, and that a new attack would bring further loosening of limits, including on distant American and Israeli sites.

Iran has already struck U.S. facilities closer to home. A missile attack on Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar on June 23, 2025, left suspected damage to a communications installation, according to later satellite imagery. The base is the largest U.S. facility in the Middle East.

He also claimed Iran had reached “an advanced level in electronic warfare” that, he said, allowed its forces to take control of American drones and land them intact. That account has not been independently verified.

No Talks, and a Condition on Lebanon

Rezaei said ending the war “on all fronts in West Asia, especially in Lebanon,” was one of Iran’s “fundamental conditions.” He also said Tehran would not send “even a single particle” of enriched nuclear material abroad, telling “our Russian friends” that the stock would stay in Iran for use in nuclear-powered ships and submarines.

A day earlier, he had called Washington’s reply to Iran’s seven conditions “deceptive” and said no talks were under way. In the Al Mayadeen interview he repeated that there were “no negotiations” with the United States and dismissed reports of a meeting with Vice President JD Vance as untrue.