Iranian official warns US after strikes: ‘Keep your word or pay the price’

Iranian parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf on Sunday warned the U.S. to maintain its end of an interim peace deal with Iran “or pay the price” following the latest airstrikes.

“The era of one-sided deals is OVER,” Ghalibaf wrote on the social platform X. “We told you: keep your word or pay the price. Reality is knocking.”

Ghalibaf’s X post included one of the 14 points of the memorandum of understanding (MOU), which reads: “Upon the signing of this MOU, the Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge for 60 days only, from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman and vice versa.”

The U.S. launched a third round of airstrikes on Iranian targets after the Islamic regime announced that it had indefinitely closed the Strait of Hormuz, the path of transit for 20 percent of the world’s oil and gas. The strait closed after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) struck the Cyprus-flagged container ship GFS Galaxy for using an “unauthorized route.”

The IRGC told Iranian state media that it will keep the strait closed “until the U.S. ends its intervention in the region.”

U.S. Central Command (Centcom) stated that one crew member was missing after the attack on the vessel caused “significant” damage to its engine room. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth responded to Centcom’s post on social media about the attack, warning: “Iran made a poor choice. Now they pay.”

These strikes have cast a dim view on the prospect of the negotiations between the U.S. and Iran, with President Trump saying that the MOU to set both countries on the path to develop a finalized peace deal is “over.” Both countries exchanged fire earlier this week, with both sides accusing the other of violating the MOU.

“I don’t want to deal with them anymore,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday before the second round of strikes on Iran. “They’re scum.”

Trump ramped up his warnings on Friday, saying that there are plans in place to “decimate and destroy” Iran in the scenario where the country carries out a reported assassination plot against him.

The threat comes after The Wall Street Journal reported that Israeli intelligence recently shared new information with U.S. officials showing that Tehran was considering a plan to kill the president.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei vowed to avenge his father, who was buried Thursday months after he was killed in the U.S. and Israel’s initial strikes on Iran in February, in a new threat on Trump’s life.

“We pledge to avenge the blood of the martyred leader and all the martyrs of these two wars from the criminal and disgraced killers,” Khamenei wrote in a Telegram post reviewed by Reuters.