Adviser to Iran's Khamenei calls Trump 'Satan himself'

A senior military adviser to Iran's Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei insulted US President Donald Trump and vowed to destroy Israel in remarks to state television on Wednesday, as their countries wage a war that has engulfed the Middle East.

"Trump is the most corrupt and stupid American president," Yahya Rahim Safavi said. "He is Satan himself."

He also reiterated longstanding threats to eradicate Israel, which is fighting the Islamic republic alongside the United States.

"In the Middle East region, Israel and Iran cannot be together. One of them must remain. The one that remains is Iran and the one that is destroyed is definitely the Zionist regime," he said.

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Separately, Iran's powerful parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf warned that Tehran will "abandon all restraint" if the United States and Israel attack any of its islands in the Gulf.

"Any aggression against soil of Iranian islands will shatter all restraint. We will abandon all restraint and make the Persian Gulf run with the blood of invaders," said Ghalibaf in a post on X.

It was not immediately clear which islands he was referring to, but a recent Axios report cited US officials as saying that capturing Kharg was on the table as the war in the Middle East spirals.