Iran's parliament approved Mehrdad Akhlaghi as the country's new defence minister on Sunday, and his first remarks in the job were a direct warning to US President Donald Trump: Tehran, he said, has already prepared countermeasures against America's GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb — the "Mother of All Bombs" — and any new US strike would meet a forceful response.
"Carried out horizontally"
Akhlaghi — some outlets transliterate his name as Akhlaqi Ketabchi — won the defence portfolio with 237 votes in favour and 15 against in a parliamentary session held by video conference, according to state broadcaster IRIB. He succeeds Aziz Nasirzadeh, who was killed in the initial US-Israeli strikes on Iran in late February, ending months of interim leadership under Majid Ebn al-Reza.
Speaking to reporters after the vote, Akhlaghi said Iran had "taken the necessary measures to counter such an action and are continuing our work with confidence." Addressing Trump directly, he warned that the US president should focus on getting American forces out of the region safely: "If he drops one bomb, he should see how many of his forces he will have to take out of the region horizontally," he said, apparently referring to potential US military casualties.
Addressing lawmakers before the vote, Akhlaghi pledged a "surprising and extensive" response if the US and Israel launched another attack: "If the American enemy makes another miscalculation, the response of the valiant Iranian people and the fighters of Islam will be surprising and extensive."
Why the "Mother of All Bombs" threat looms
The warning follows reports that Washington is weighing the use of the GBU-43/B against Iranian targets. CNN reported this week that the US has developed strike plans that could include using the bomb — the largest non-nuclear bomb in the US arsenal — against Iranian energy infrastructure and nuclear sites if Trump orders renewed combat operations. Trump has also discussed striking the heavily fortified Pickaxe Mountain nuclear facility.
Akhlaghi, a former defence-industry veteran who has spent decades in Iran's aerospace and missile sectors and is under US and EU sanctions, told parliament that Iran's defensive capabilities had been upgraded in ways that changed "the enemy's assessments and calculations." Separately, Supreme National Security Council Secretary Mohsen Rezaei said Iran's armed forces had prepared a new operational plan for another conflict that would be "more devastating" than previous rounds of fighting.
Deal or devastation — and a divided Washington
The US posture hardened just a day earlier, when Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tehran faces a choice between abandoning its "nuclear ambitions" at the negotiating table or facing devastating military action. "Iran's going to have a choice to make real quick about whether they're going to give those up at the table or face the kind of devastation that America can bring and will bring swiftly if necessary," Hegseth told military cadets at the University of Tennessee on Saturday.
Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance hinted in an interview aired Friday that he has privately disagreed with Trump over the Iran war — the clearest public signal yet of daylight between the two men on the roughly eight-month conflict, which has also drawn sharp criticism from conservatives who say it contradicts Trump's pledge to avoid costly foreign interventions.
Diplomacy is not entirely dead: Iranian lawmaker Yaqoub Rezazadeh said this weekend that indirect talks continue through Qatar and Oman, with both sides having presented conditions. Tehran has also offered a plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days if its conditions are met, though it says nuclear negotiations are not its immediate priority. Trump has predicted the war will end "very quickly" — even as Saudi Arabia intercepted Houthi missiles and tankers caught fire in the Sea of Oman this weekend.
The takeaway
Akhlaghi's debut message is aimed as much at Washington's calculation as at Iran's domestic audience: Tehran wants the US to believe a new strike — MOAB included — would cost American lives across the region, while the US wants Tehran to believe the alternative to a deal is devastation. With back-channel talks still alive but threats escalating on both sides, the next move belongs to Trump.
Watch: 'All Americans, get out!' — Iran's new defence minister's explosive first message to Trump (Times of India video report on Akhlaghi's warning).
Music in this post's reel: Kevin MacLeod - Hitman (incompetech.com), licensed under CC BY 3.0
Sources: Reuters report on Akhlaghi's parliamentary approval; Mehr News Agency report on Akhlaghi's remarks to parliament; Anadolu Agency report on Hegseth's deal-or-devastation warning; Firstpost report on Vance's disagreement with Trump over the Iran war.