Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif speaks to the media in Tbilisi, Georgia, April 18, 2017. Photo: REUTERS/David Mdzinarishvili.

JNS.org – Iran threatened the United States and Israel on Wednesday over the 2015 nuclear deal and a warning from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In response to Iran and Syria agreeing earlier this week to help the latter’s armed forces, Netanyahu said, “Whoever threatens us with our demise puts himself in similar danger, and anyway won’t achieve what they set out to do.”

“The Israel Defense Forces will continue to act with full determination and strength against Iran’s attempts to station forces and advanced weapons systems in Syria,” he added.

“Iran, a country without nuclear weapons, is threatened with atomic annihilation by a warmonger standing next to an actual nuclear-weapons factory. Beyond shameless in the gall,” Iranian Foreign Minister Javid Zarif posted on Twitter.

Islamic Revolution Guards Corps Brig. Gen. Rasoul Sanayee Raad added to Zarif’s sentiment, saying that the US “war against Iran will have nothing for the US but heavy costs and the Islamic Republic of Iran’s deterrent power can inflict heavy damage … the US has understood that there will be no ultimate victory in case it opens war against Iran, and that it cannot guarantee avoiding it from becoming a war of attrition.”

Meanwhile, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and his cabinet that, despite the European Union pledging last week $58 million overall to Iran to circumvent US sanctions that were reimposed earlier this month after the US withdrawal from the nuclear deal in May, the regime “should give up hope on [Europe] over economic issues or the nuclear deal.”

“The nuclear deal is a means, not the goal,” added Khamenei, “and if we come to this conclusion that it does not serve our national interests, we can abandon it.”