A senior Iranian lawmaker and former foreign minister has called for Iran to seize a US military base in the Middle East and take American troops hostage, describing it as a response to recent US military action against Iran. Manouchehr Mottaki, who served as Iran’s foreign minister from 2005 to 2010 and has been a member of parliament since 2024, made the remarks in an interview broadcast on Iranian state media on Wednesday.
He said Iran should launch a ground operation to infiltrate and capture a US military base in the region and “kidnap hundreds or thousands of US soldiers” in retaliation for recent US strikes and what he described as threats to invade Iran’s Kharg Island and other major oil facilities in southern Iran.
Last week, Mottaki also dismissed the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding talks between the United States and Iran as a “deception plan”. “If the negotiating team still does not believe this, hold a meeting and explain it to them,” Iranian state-aligned media quoted him as saying. “Islamabad was a plan, a broader scheme of deception and maneuvering by the United States. The Americans had a plan that they thought they could finish within two or three days and achieve their goal, which was to bring an end to the Islamic Republic. They failed.”
According to London-based Iran International, Mottaki also called for “vengeance”, both inside and outside Iran, following strikes that it reported killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Iran International also reported that Mottaki urged legal action against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump over the strikes on Iran, saying such prosecutions would “disrupt American regulation”. He said the directive to pursue the two leaders had been communicated by Khamenei to the head of Iran’s judiciary following the June 2025 conflict.
In separate remarks reported by Iran’s WANA news agency in May, Mottaki accused Bahrain of acting as “American puppets” by backing an anti-Iran resolution on the Strait of Hormuz at the UN Security Council.
“Due to their lack of foresight and understanding, the leaders in Manama fail to realize that just as they should not play games with the Americans, they must certainly not play games with the Iranians,” he said. “This will undoubtedly be their final anti-Iran effort,” he added.
Meanwhile, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) issued a statement through its affiliated Fars News Agency calling on people in Kuwait and Jordan to push for the removal of US forces from military bases in their countries.
“Honorable and noble people of Kuwait and the holy land of Jordan, it is expected of you, Muslim and noble nations, to expel these child-killers and occupiers from your soil,” the statement said.
The IRGC also urged people “not to miss any opportunity to destroy the aggressive American institutions and to liberate the Islamic lands from the bases of the American occupiers.”
Mottaki’s remarks came as President Donald Trump said in an interview with Fox News on Wednesday that the United States would intensify strikes on Iranian infrastructure if Tehran failed to negotiate. “We’re going to hit them very hard tonight. We’re going to hit them very hard tomorrow night. We’re going to hit them very hard the night after,” Trump said. “We’ll save energy targets for last. Next week it gets really bad for them.” “We’re gonna knock out all their power plants. We’re gonna knock out all their bridges, unless they get to the table and negotiate.”
Referring to recent US Central Command operations, Trump added: “We’re beating them up really badly. They have to be beaten up.” “We’re hitting them very, very hard. We’re hitting every single thing they have along the [Hormuz] shore.”
Responding to Iranian statements that it was not pursuing a nuclear weapon, Trump said: “Everything Iran says is a lie.” He added that his decision to launch Operation Epic Fury on 28 February was driven by Iran’s continued pursuit of nuclear capabilities. “We knew they wanted a nuclear weapon,” he said. “If they had a nuclear weapon, Israel wouldn’t be here.”