Iran's Foreign Ministry has dismissed as "provocative" the U.S. government’s decision to put Iran "on notice" over its recent test of a medium-range ballistic missile.
The U.S. claims "are baseless, repetitive, and provocative," Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi said on February 2, according to Iran’s state IRNA news agency.
Speaking to journalists in Washington on the same day, U.S. President Donald Trump said that "nothing is off the table" with regard to Washington's response to the test.
And White House spokesman Sean Spicer said that the U.S. announcement that it was putting Iran "on notice" is a signal to Tehran that the test "is not going unresponded to."
U.S. national security adviser Michael Flynn had previously announced on February 1 that the administration of former President Barack Obama had "failed to respond adequately to Tehran's malign actions."
He put Iran "on notice," without elaborating on what actions may be taken.
Trump said in a Twitter post on February 2 that Iranian leaders “should have been thankful for the terrible deal the U.S. made with them!" -- referring to a 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and leading international powers.
"Iran was on its last legs and ready to collapse until the U.S. came along and gave it a life-line in the form of the Iran Deal: $150 billion," a second tweet read.
Trump has frequently criticized the July 2015 nuclear deal, calling it weak and ineffective.
Iran has conducted several missile tests since the agreement, which restricted Iran's nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief, but the latest launch was the first since the Trump took office on January 20.
The U.S. administration says Iran's January 29 missile launch defied a 2015 UN Security Council resolution calling on Iran not to test nuclear-capable missiles, which Tehran denies.
Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn, said on February 1 that the previous U.S. administration of Barack Obama "failed to respond adequately to Tehran's malign actions" and put Iran "on notice," without elaborating on what actions may be taken.
But Tehran says it won't yield to U.S. threats over the missile test that it says was part of efforts to develop the Islamic republic’s conventional defensive capability.
The new U.S. administration "will understand that threatening Iran is useless," Ali Akbar Velayati, a top adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said earlier on February 2.
"Iran does not need permission from any country to defend itself," Velayati was quoted as saying by the semiofficial Fars news agency.
A U.S. official was quoted as saying the Iranian ballistic missile exploded after traveling 1,000 kilometers, but Tehran denies this.
"The missile test on Sunday was successful," Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan told the semiofficial Tasnim news agency on February 2.
"The test was not a violation of a nuclear deal with world powers or any UN resolution," Dehghan insisted.