[The National] The US defence secretary James Mattis on Saturday called Iran the biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world after the White House announced new sanctions linked to Tehran’s ballistic missile programme.Iran responded to the sanctions by ramping up its rhetoric of defiance and carrying out missile defence exercises on Saturday.
The Iranian foreign ministry said Tehran would impose its own "legal limitations" on Americans that it said supported holy warriors in the region.
The missile defence exercise in Semnan province aimed to "showcase the power of Iran’s revolution and to dismiss the sanctions", according to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards website.
The tests were to be of short-range missiles with a 75km range, according to the site, and would display Iran’s "complete preparedness to deal with the threats" from the US.
The administration of new US president Donald Trump
...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States...
was expected to take a harder line on Iran than Barack Obama
They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them...
, who sought to engage rather than contain the US adversary, but there has been a sharp escalation of rhetoric after a ballistic missile test and an attack by Iran-backed Yemeni rebels on a Saudi frigate last week.
"As far as Iran goes, this is the single biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world," Mr Mattis said in Tokyo.
Mr Mattis said the US has no plans to send more troops to the Middle East in response to Iranian missile tests.
"It does no good to ignore it. It does no good to dismiss it and at the same time I don’t see any need to increase the number of forces we have in the Middle East at this time," he said. "We always have the capability to do so but right now I don’t think it’s necessary."