Iran warns European countries will be ‘legitimate targets’ if they join conflict
An Iranian official warned that any European countries that enter the conflict against Iran will become “legitimate targets” for Tehran’s retaliation.
Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi made the remark to France24 as Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Saturday apologized to neighboring countries that have been attacked by the regime.
“We have already informed the Europeans and everybody else that they should be careful not to be involved in this war of aggression against Iran,” Takht-Ravanchi told the network. “If they help, I’m not trying to name any country, but if any country joins in the aggression against Iran, joins America and Israel in the aggression against Iran, definitely they will be also the legitimate targets for Iranian retaliation.”
“This war has imposed on us, and we will continue to defend ourselves to the best of our abilities,” he added. “We have an obligation to defend our people and that is what exactly we are doing.”
Takht-Ravanchi also claimed Iran was “negotiating in good faith” in talks with the U.S. about its nuclear program, before America launched Operation Epic Fury and Israel began Operation Roaring Lion on Feb. 28.
“We are sincere. We are sincere in our endeavor to arrive at a peaceful conclusion of this issue,” he told France24.
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Pezeshkian said Saturday that any future attacks coming out of Iran would only be in response to attacks against the country.
“I should apologize to the neighboring countries that were attacked by Iran, on my own behalf,” he said, according to The Associated Press. “From now on, they should not attack neighboring countries or fire missiles at them, unless we are attacked by those countries. I think we should solve this through diplomacy.”
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Pezeshkian made the apology during a prerecorded televised speech on Saturday after Iran launched repeated strikes on Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Oman.
Despite the vow, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Ministry of Defense said on Saturday that the country’s air defense systems intercepted 16 ballistic missiles, 15 of which were destroyed while one fell into the sea.
Iran’s ideological state: faith, fear and favors fuel its vast propaganda and patronage network
When Benny Sabti was a child growing up in Iran, he remembers receiving an unusual prize at school. “For being an excellent student, I received a Persian translation of Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler,” Sabti told Fox News Digital. “They translated Hitler’s book into Persian and distributed it to students.”
The experience stayed with him. Looking back, Sabti, now an Iran expert at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Israel, says it reflected a broader effort by Iran’s ruling clerical establishment to shape how young Iranians viewed politics, religion and the world around them.
Schools, mosques, workplaces and media all became part of an ideological ecosystem designed to reinforce loyalty to the regime. But critics of Iran’s leadership say religion itself was often not the ultimate goal.
“Faith for them is their tool,” Banafsheh Zand, an Iranian-American journalist and editor of the Iran So Far Away Substack, told Fox News Digital. “It’s not the end all to be all. It’s a tool that they can hide behind so that they can carry out all their criminalities.”
Religion and power
The Islamic Republic was founded on the doctrine of velayat-e faqih, or “guardianship of the Islamic jurist,” which places ultimate political and religious authority in the hands of the country’s supreme leader.
But Zand argues that in practice the system functions less as a purely religious project and more as a mechanism of political control. “It’s more like a mafia,” she said. “They use faith in order to keep people down.”
According to Zand, ideology is reinforced through a mix of financial incentives and intimidation. “They tried by incentive and money and buying people,” she said.
Programs tied to the Basij, a militia affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), have often provided benefits such as jobs, housing and education to families aligned with the regime.
“If you are poor and you join the Basij, they give you benefits,” Zand said. “But you have to go along with whatever it is that they offer you.”
Ideology embedded in daily life
Sabti says the Islamic Republic built a vast network designed to reinforce ideology in everyday life. “In banks, offices, public spaces and even in the bazaars, regime representatives walk between shops telling people it is time to pray and checking who is not attending,” Sabti said.
Mosques themselves are closely integrated into the political system. Friday prayer leaders often deliver sermons aligned with government messaging.
“There are 16 propaganda bodies in Iran,” Sabti said, describing a network of state institutions responsible for spreading the regime’s interpretation of Islam and the ideals of the Islamic Revolution.
Some institutions also focus on exporting that ideology abroad. “There is a university dedicated to converting Sunnis to Shiism,” he said. “They bring people from Africa and South America to Iran, convert them to Shiism and send them back to export the Shiite Islamic revolution.”
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Indoctrination in schools
Schools play a central role in the regime’s ideological system.
“Schools are heavily indoctrinated,” Sabti said. “In civil studies books, Islam was promoted as superior to all other ideologies.”
Religious messaging appears across the curriculum. “You cannot separate any school subject from Islam,” Sabti said. “Not history, not geography. Everything is mixed with ideology. The only thing missing was adding it to mathematics.”
For Sabti, the Mein Kampf episode symbolized the ideological environment students were exposed to. The message, he said, reinforced hostility toward perceived enemies and embedded a political worldview from an early age.
Ideology and hypocrisy
Sabti says the credibility of the system is also undermined by the behavior of Iran’s own elites. “You can see it in the second generation,” he said. “Their children live abroad while the elites live in palaces in Iran and in other countries. It is hypocrisy.”
Zand says ideology has always been reinforced by intimidation. “They make examples out of people in the most vicious possible way,” she said. “It’s fear and manipulation.”
According to Zand, that atmosphere of fear shapes daily life for many Iranians. “Everybody is afraid of the police,” she said. “Everybody is afraid of their neighbors.”
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An ideology losing its grip
Despite the regime’s extensive ideological machinery, Sabti believes many Iranians never fully accepted the worldview the government tried to impose.
“Over the years, the indoctrination has stopped working,” he said. “Most of the public does not truly believe it.”
Still, the Islamic Republic remains in power. “The regime maintains control through money, weapons and propaganda,” Sabti said.
Zand agrees the system never fully reshaped Iranian society. Many people, she said, complied outwardly simply to avoid punishment.
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“They won’t have a problem to transfer as long as they realize that the new Iran has no room for the violence and the horrifying characteristics of the Islamist regime,” Zand told Fox News Digital.
She said that beneath the surface, Iran’s cultural identity remained intact even after decades of pressure from the state.
Man convicted of Iran-backed Trump assassination plot compared his plan to Butler shooting: FBI
A Pakistani man convicted Friday in federal court of plotting to assassinate President Donald Trump and other politicians told an FBI agent he thought Iran “was responsible” for the assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Asif Merchant, 47, told the FBI agent, Jacqueline Smith, that the incident “was the same thing he was sent here to do,” Smith testified during Merchant’s trial. Merchant told jurors the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) sent him on a “mission” to kill U.S. politicians, including by telling him to attend a Republican rally.
Merchant was arrested July 12, 2024, one day prior to the shooting in Butler, where Thomas Crooks fired several shots into a rally crowd, killing one and grazing Trump’s ear.
The FBI has said repeatedly it found no evidence that Crooks had co-conspirators or that any foreign actors were involved in the incident.
Merchant, who was found guilty on all charges Friday after fewer than two hours of deliberation, was convicted by a jury in Brooklyn, New York, of murder-for-hire and attempting to commit terrorism. He testified that Trump was not his only target, telling jurors then-President Joe Biden and former presidential candidate Nikki Haley were also on his list.
He claimed he only took part in the plot, which was foiled by the FBI before coming to fruition, because Iran’s IRGC warned it would target his family.
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“I had no other options,” Merchant said. “My family was threatened.”
Merchant now faces a maximum penalty of life in prison. His sentence will be determined at a later hearing.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement that Merchant “landed on American soil hoping to kill President Trump — instead, he was met with the might of American law enforcement.”
“The Department of Justice will remain ever-vigilant to protect Americans, prosecute terrorists, and halt acts of terrorism before they happen,” Bondi said.
Merchant was arrested after he was recorded on camera outlining a plot on a napkin to kill a politician with a person who turned out to be an FBI informant. Federal prosecutors showed video during the trial of Merchant speaking to the informant. The prosecutors said Merchant also tried to hire two hit men and pay them $5,000, but the men turned out to be federal agents posing as assassins.
Smith, the FBI agent who met with Merchant after his arrest, said Merchant never conveyed that he feared for his family. Merchant said he wanted to do intelligence work and be paid for it, Smith said.
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The FBI agent also said Merchant was told by an Iranian handler to attend a Republican political rally to scope out security. But Merchant was worried about being identified, so he watched the rally online instead.
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Merchant’s defense team told jurors their client, who has two wives, was a family man and cared deeply about his faith and that he intentionally acted carelessly because he wanted to be caught.
In their closing arguments, defense lawyers said Merchant had his hand forced in the operation, thinking his family would be harmed if he did not cooperate. Additionally, the lawyers cited several instances in which Merchant’s actions as an intelligence operator were little more than incompetent.