The remarks by Mahmoud Alavi mark a rare occasion that a government official says Iran could reverse its course on the nuclear program. Tehran has long insisted that the program is for peaceful purposes only, such as power generation and medical research.

A 1990s fatwa, or religious edict, by the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei states that nuclear weapons are forbidden.

“Our nuclear program is peaceful and the fatwa by the supreme leader has forbidden nuclear weapons, but if they push Iran in that direction, then it wouldn’t be Iran’s fault but those who pushed it,” Alavi was quoted as saying.

“If a cat is cornered, it may show a kind of behavior that a free cat would not,” he said and added that Iran has no plans to move toward a nuclear weapon under current circumstances.

Israel has long accused Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons, and the 2015 nuclear accord between Iran and world powers put strict limits on Iranian nuclear activities to prevent it from reaching weapons capabilities. In exchange, Iran was given sanctions relief.

Then-President Donald Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018, prompting Iran to resume some of its nuclear activities. The new Biden administration has signaled it would like to revive the deal, raising concerns in Israel.

The Israeli military estimates that Iran is still two years away from reaching the capability of producing a bomb. But in a briefing with reporters, a senior military official said the army believes Iran has made “significant progress” in collecting fissile material and research and development. He said the army is especially concerned about “irreversible” progress, such as the knowledge it has gained from using sophisticated centrifuges. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was discussing an intelligence assessment.

The 81-year-old Khamenei, who has the final say on all matters of state in Iran, on Sunday urged the United States to lift all sanctions if it wants Iran to live up to commitments under its 2015 nuclear deal. However, President Joe Biden has said the U.S. won’t be making the first move.

Iran President Hassan Rouhani in comments aired on state TV on Tuesday reiterated the U.S. must first take steps to honor nuclear deal agreements. “Any day that the U.S. resumes implementing its commitments under the nuclear deal, we will fully implement our promises under the deal as well,” he said.

Following the killing last December of an Iranian scientist credited with spearheading the country’s disbanded military nuclear program, Iran’s parliament has approved a law to block international nuclear inspectors later this month — a serious violation of the accord.

Alavi, the intelligence minister, was also quoted as saying that a member of the Iranian armed forces “facilitated” the killing of the scientist, which Iran has blamed on Israel.

The minister did not expand on what he meant — and it was not clear if the soldier had carried out the explosion that killed the scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. Israel, which has been suspected of killing Iranian nuclear scientists over the last decade, has repeatedly declined to comment on the attack.

This was the first time that Iran acknowledged a member of its armed forces may have acted as an accomplice in the killing of Fakhrizadeh, who headed Iran’s so-called AMAD program, which Israel and the West have alleged was a military operation looking at the feasibility of building a nuclear weapon.

The International Atomic Energy Agency — the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog — says that “structured program” ended in 2003. U.S. intelligence agencies concurred with that assessment in a 2007 report.

In December, Rouhani vowed to avenge Fakhrizadeh’s killing, saying his country will decide time or venue of any retaliatory action.

In response to Trump’s so-called “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, the country began to gradually violate its atomic commitments under the nuclear deal. It also threatened further provocations in a bid to increase its leverage and get Biden to prioritize a return to the deal as he moves to dismantle Trump’s legacy.

As part of those steps, Iran has begun enriching uranium closer to weapons-grade levels and said it would experiment with uranium metals, a key component of a nuclear warhead. Iran insists that all breaches of the pact are easily reversible.

Associated Press writers Amir Vahdat in Tehran and Josef Federman in Tel Aviv, Israel, contributed.

According to the report, commando units and airborne infantry were participating in the annual exercise, along with fighter jets, helicopters and military transport aircraft. Iran’s National Army chief Abdolrahim Mousavi was overseeing the drill.

Iran has recently stepped up military drills as part of an effort to pressure President-elect Joe Biden over the nuclear deal that President Donald Trump pulled out of. Biden has said the U.S. could rejoin the multinational accord meant to contain Iran’s nuclear program.

Later on Tuesday, state TV aired footage of paratroopers, armored vehicles and a multiple launch rocket system fired during the drill.

“The general goal of this drill is to assess the offensive and penetrative power of the ground forces against the enemy from air, ground and sea,” said Kiomars Heidari, chief of ground forces.

On Saturday, Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard conducted a drill, launching anti-warship ballistic missiles at a simulated target at a distance of some 1,800 kilometers (1,120 miles) in the Indian Ocean, a day after the Guard’s aerospace division launched surface-to-surface ballistic missiles and drones against “hypothetical enemy bases” in the country’s vast central desert.

Last Thursday, Iran’s navy fired cruise missiles as part of a naval drill in the Gulf of Oman, under surveillance of what appeared to be a U.S. nuclear submarine. Earlier last week, the Guard’s affiliated forces carried out a limited maneuver in the Persian Gulf after a massive, drones-only drill across half of the country earlier in January.

Tensions between Washington and Tehran have increased amid a series of incidents stemming from Trump’s unilateral withdrawal from Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers. In the final days of the Trump administration, Tehran seized a South Korean oil tanker and begun enriching uranium closer to weapons-grade levels, while the U.S. sent B-52 bombers, the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier and a nuclear submarine into the region.

Trump in 2018 unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from Iran’s nuclear deal, in which Tehran had agreed to limit its uranium enrichment in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. Trump cited Iran’s ballistic missile program among other issues in withdrawing from the accord.

When the U.S. then stepped up economic sanctions, Iran gradually abandoned the limits that the deal had imposed on its nuclear development.

The two-day missile drill was being held in the gulf’s southeastern waters, and two new Iranian-made warships joined the exercise: the missile-launching Zereh, or “armor,” and the country’s largest military ship, the Makran — a logistics vessel with a helicopter pad named for a coastal region in southern Iran.

President Donald Trump in 2018 unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from Iran’s nuclear deal, in which Tehran had agreed to limit its uranium enrichment in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. Trump cited Iran’s ballistic missile program among other issues in withdrawing from the accord.

When the U.S. then ramped up sanctions, Iran gradually and publicly abandoned the deal’s limits on its nuclear development as a series of escalating incidents pushed the two countries to the brink of war at the beginning of the year.

In recent weeks, Iran has increased its military drills. On Saturday, the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard held a naval parade in the Arabian Gulf, and a week earlier Iran held a massive drone maneuver across half the country.

Iran on occasion announces military achievements that cannot be independently verified. State TV said the 121,000-metric ton Makran is Iran’s largest military ship at 228 meters (748 feet) long, 42 meters (138 feet) wide and 21.5 meters (70 feet) tall. The Makran, a logistics ship that supports combat ships in the fleet, can travel for nearly three years without docking and carries information collection and processing gear.

Video footage released by the military showed helicopters carrying commandos to the Makran as part of the exercise.

Last week, Iran seized a South Korean oil tanker and its crew members in the Gulf, and continues to hold the vessel at an Iranian port. The Islamic Republic has apparently sought to increase its leverage over Seoul ahead of negotiations over billions of dollars in Iranian assets frozen in South Korean banks tied to U.S. sanctions on Iran.

On Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused Iran of having secret ties with the militant al-Qaida network and imposed new sanctions on several senior Iranian officials. Iran has denied the accusation.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday said in a televised speech during a Cabinet meeting that U.S. sanctions will fail. “We are witnessing the failure of a policy, the maximum pressure campaign, economic terrorism,” he said.

Speaking to The Associated Press, Hossein Dehghan struck a hard-line tone familiar to those in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, a force he long served in before becoming a defense minister under President Hassan Rouhani.

A soldier has yet to serve as Iran’s top civilian leader since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, in part over the initial suspicion that its conventional military forces remained loyal to the toppled shah. But hard-liners in recent years have openly suggested Iran move toward a military dictatorship given its economic problems and threats from abroad, particularly after President Donald Trump pulled America out of Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

“We don’t welcome a crisis. We don’t welcome war. We are not after starting a war,” Dehghan said Wednesday. “But we are not after negotiations for the sake of negotiations either.”

Dehghan, 63, described himself as a “nationalist” with “no conventional political tendency” during an interview in his wood-paneled office in downtown Tehran. He’s one of many likely to register to run in the June 18 election as Rouhani is term-limited from running again. Others likely include a young technocrat with ties to Iranian intelligence and former hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Dehghan’s military service came under presidencies representative of the groups that largely compose Iran’s tightly controlled political arena — reformists who seek to slowly change Iran’s theocracy from within, hard-liners who want to strengthen the theocracy and the relative moderates between. Those calling for radical change are barred from running for office by Iran’s powerful constitutional watchdog known as the Guardian Council, which serves under Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

While discussing the world Iran finds itself in, Dehghan’s points mirrored many of Khamenei’s. The former head of the Guard’s air force who achieved the rank of brigadier general said any negotiations with the West could not include Iran’s ballistic missiles, which he described as a “deterrent” to Tehran’s adversaries.

Propaganda involving Iran’s missile program has surged in recent weeks. The front page of the English-language Tehran Times on Wednesday showed a map of Iran’s missile ranges with red stars marking American bases across the region under the words “Back off!” printed in big, bold letters. A headline above warned Iran would respond to “any melancholy adventure by Trump.”

“The Islamic Republic of Iran will not negotiate its defensive power … with anybody under any circumstances,” Dehghan said. “Missiles are a symbol of the massive potential that is in our experts, young people and industrial centers.”

Dehghan, who has been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury since November 2019, warned against any American military escalation in Trump’s final weeks in office.

“A limited, tactical conflict can turn into a full-fledged war,” he said. “Definitely, the United States, the region and the world cannot stand such a comprehensive crisis.”

President-elect Joe Biden has said he’s willing to return to the nuclear deal, which saw sanctions on Iran lifted in exchange for Tehran limiting its uranium enrichment, if Iran first complies with its limits. Since Trump’s withdrawal, Iran has gone beyond all the deal’s restrictions while still allowing United Nations nuclear inspectors to work in the country. Dehghan said those U.N. checks should continue so long as an inspector is not a “spy.”

In the time since, an advanced centrifuge assembly plant at Iran’s Natanz nuclear site exploded and caught fire in July. Dehghan said that reconstruction at Natanz was ongoing after satellite photos showed new construction at the site. He described the incident as “industrial sabotage.”

“Those who were in charge of installing some devices possibly made some changes there that led to the explosion,” Dehghan said, without elaborating.

A Dehghan presidency likely would be looked upon with suspicion in Washington and Paris. As a young commander in the Guard, Dehghan oversaw its operations in Lebanon and Syria between 1982 and 1984, according to an official biography given to Iran’s parliament in 2013. Israel, Iran’s archenemy in the Mideast, had just invaded Lebanon amid that country’s civil war.

In 1983, a suicide bomber in a truck loaded with military-grade explosives attacked U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 American troops and 58 French soldiers. While Iran long has denied being involved, a U.S. District Court judge found Tehran responsible in 2003. That ruling said Iran’s ambassador to Syria at the time called “a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and instructed him to instigate the Marine barracks bombing.”

Dehghan vehemently denied he was involved in the bombing, though he was the Guard’s top commander there at the time.

“The U.S. tries to link anything happening in the world to someone in Iran,” he said. “Do they really have evidence? Why do they link it to me?”

While stressing he wanted to avoid conflict, Dehghan warned that Israel’s expanding presence in the Mideast could turn into a “strategic mistake.” Israel just reached normalization deals with Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.

“It is opening an extensive front,” he said. “Just imagine every Israeli in any military base can be a target for groups who are opposed to Israel.”

Dehghan also said Iran continues to seek the expulsion of all American forces from the region as revenge for the U.S. drone strike in Baghdad that killed Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of its expeditionary Quds Force in January. That strike saw Iran launch a retaliatory ballistic missile attack on U.S. troops in Iraq that injured dozens and nearly sparked a war.

Iran’s retaliatory strikes were a mere “initial slap,” Dehghan said. And there would be no easy return to negotiations with the U.S. in part due to that, he added.

“We do not seek a situation in which (the other party) buys time to weaken our nation,” he said.

Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writer Isabel DeBre in Dubai contributed to this report.

While Iran says it plans no “buying spree,” it can now in theory purchase weapons to upgrade military armaments dating back to before its 1979 Islamic Revolution and sell its own locally produced gear abroad.

In practice, however, Iran’s economy remains crippled by broad-reaching U.S. sanctions, and other nations may avoid arms deals with Tehran for fear of American financial retaliation. The Trump administration has warned that any sales of weapons to Iran or exports from Iran will be penalized.

The Islamic Republic heralded the end of the arms embargo as “a momentous day for the international community … in defiance of the U.S. regime’s effort.” The Trump administration, meanwhile, says the expiration is moot since it reimposed all U.N. sanctions on Iran, including the arms embargo, via a clause in the nuclear deal Trump withdrew from in 2018, a claim ignored by the rest of the world.

“Today’s normalization of Iran’s defense cooperation with the world is a win for the cause of multilateralism and peace and security in our region,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif wrote on Twitter.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo flatly rejected the expiration.

“The United States is prepared to use its domestic authorities to sanction any individual or entity that materially contributes to the supply, sale, or transfer of conventional arms to or from Iran, as well as those wto ho provide technical training, financial support and services, and other assistance related to these arms,” he said in a statement. “For the past 10 years, countries have refrained from selling weapons to Iran under various U.N. measures,” Pompeo said. “Any country that now challenges this prohibition will be very clearly choosing to fuel conflict and tension over promoting peace and security.”

Russia’s deputy U.N. ambassador, Dmitry Polyansky, responded to Pompeo with a tweet urging the U.S. to help Middle East peace by not provoking Iran. “And please change words ‘sanctions’ and ‘punishment’ in your vocabulary to ‘dialogue’ and ‘engagement’. That would help a lot! Make US respected again!”, he added.

Sunday’s expiration of the arms embargo was, in fact, the proximate cause for the U.S. decision last month to move forward with the so-called “snapback” of international sanctions in Iran. The Americans tried unsuccessfully to get the U.N. Security Council to extend the embargo but suffered a humiliating defeat when only one country on the 15-member panel supported it.

In response, the administration announced that it had invoked “snapback” — a mechanism provided for in the Security Council resolution that enshrined the nuclear deal that allows any participant in the accord to restore U.N. sanctions if they determine Iran is not complying with its terms. The rest of the council, however, rejected U.S. standing to trigger snapback, saying it had lost its right to do so when Trump pulled our of the deal.

The United Nations banned Iran from buying major foreign weapon systems in 2010 amid tensions over its nuclear program. An earlier embargo targeted Iranian arms exports.

The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency predicted in 2019 that if the embargo ended, Iran likely would try to purchase Russian Su-30 fighter jets, Yak-130 trainer aircraft and T-90 tanks. Tehran also may try to buy Russia’s S-400 anti-aircraft missile system and its Bastian coastal defense missile system, the DIA said. China also could sell Iran arms.

Iran long has been outmatched by U.S.-backed Gulf nations like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which have purchased billions of dollars of advanced American weaponry. In response, Tehran turned toward developing locally made ballistic missiles.

Iran has blasted Gulf Arab purchases of U.S.-made defense equipment as “regrettably lucrative weapon deals” with some of those arms used in the ongoing war in Yemen. That conflict pits a Saudi-led coalition backing the country’s internationally recognized government against rebel forces backed by Iran.

The U.N. arms embargoes, however, did not stop Iran from sending weapons ranging from assault rifles to ballistic missiles to Yemen’s Houthi rebels. While Tehran denies arming the Houthis, Western governments and weapons experts repeatedly have linked Iranian arms to the rebels.

Six Gulf Arab nations that backed the extension of the arms embargoes noted arms shipments to Yemen in their objection to the resumption of any weapon sales to Iran. They also mentioned in a letter to the U.N. Security Council that Iran mistakenly shot down a Ukrainian passenger plane in January and its navy accidentally killed 19 of its own sailors in a missile strike during an exercise. The U.N. also linked Iran to a 2019 attack on Saudi Arabia’s main crude oil refinery, though Tehran denies any links and Yemen’s rebel Houthis claimed responsibility.

Sunday also marked the end of U.N. travel bans on a number of Iranian military and paramilitary Revolutionary Guard members.

Tensions between Iran and the U.S. reached fever pitch at the start of the year, when an American drone killed a top Iranian general in Baghdad. Tehran retaliated with a ballistic missile attack on U.S. forces in Iraq that injured dozens. Meanwhile, Iran has steadily broken limits of the nuclear deal in an attempt to pressure Europe at salvaging the accord.

In recent months, provocations on both sides have slowed as President Donald Trump faces a re-election campaign against former Vice President Joe Biden. Biden has said he’s willing to offer Iran “a credible path back to diplomacy” if Tehran returns to “strict compliance” with the deal.

Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.

Units from the navy, air force and ground forces are participating in a nearly 2 million-square-kilometer (772,200-square-mile) area of the Gulf of Oman. State television said Iranian submarines and drones were being deployed.

State TV aired footage of the launching of various short range surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles and of jet fighters and airborne troops descending on vessels including a submarine. One of the missiles hit a drone from a mock enemy.

“Marines and commandos … infiltrated at subsurface, surface and air levels by using domestic equipment built by the defense ministry and our scientific and industrial centers,” said Adm. Shahram Irani, the military’s spokesman for the exercise.

On Wednesday, Adm. Habibollah Sayyari, commander of the annual exercise dubbed Zolfaghar-99, said the operation is aimed at “improving readiness in confronting foreign threats and any possible invasion.”

Sayyari’s comments hinted at the threat of military conflict amid tensions between Iran and the U.S., which has sought to extend a years-long U.N. weapons embargo on Tehran that is due to expire in October.

The U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, which patrols Mideast waterways, declined to comment on the exercise.

Last month, U.S. Central Command published a black-and-white video showing what appeared to be Iranian special forces fast-roping from a helicopter onto the oil tanker MT Wila, whose last position appeared to be off the eastern coast of the United Arab Emirates near the city of Khorfakkan. Iranian state television later acknowledged the brief seizure, referring to the operation as a routine inspection without elaborating.

In July, Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard fired a missile from a helicopter targeting a replica of a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Strait of Hormuz in an exercise aimed at threatening the U.S.

In January, a U.S. drone strike killed a top Iranian general at the Baghdad airport and Tehran responded by firing ballistic missiles at American forces in Iraq.

Iran’s navy operates in the Gulf of Oman on the eastern side of the strait, through which 20 percent of all oil shipping passes.

Associated Press writer Isabel DeBre in Dubai, United Arab Emirates contributed to this report.

Mustafa al-Kadhimi arrived in Tehran on his first official visit abroad since taking office more than two months ago, Iranian media reported.

State television showed footage of al-Kadhimi landing at Mehrabad airport. The TV outlet said al-Kadhimi would meet top Iranian leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Rouhani.

The official website of the office of the Iranian presidency later released a photo of Rouhani and al-Kadhimi at a welcome ceremony in Tehran, showing both wearing protective face masks to help prevent spread of the coronavirus.

“We are certain that the visit will be a turning point in relations between the two countries,” Rouhani said after meeting with the Iraqi premier. “We still remain ready to stand by the Iraqi nation and apply efforts for stability and security in Iraq and the region.”

Al-Kadhimi replied: “Iraq will not allow the posing of any threat from its soil against Iran.”

Iran sees the U.S. military presence in Iraq as a threat to Tehran.

The visit came after Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif traveled to Baghdad over the weekend. It was Zarif’s first visit to Iraq since a U.S. airstrike in January killed a top Iranian general, Qassim Soleimani, outside Baghdad’s international airport. The strike catapulted Iraq to the brink of a U.S.-Iran proxy war that could have destabilized the Middle East.

In Baghdad, Zarif paid a visit to the site where Soleimani was killed, saying “Iran-Iraq relations will not be shaken” despite the general’s death. Soleimani led Iran’s expeditionary Quds Force and was the architect of its regional military activities.

In Tehran, al-Kadhimi said Iraq’s foreign policy is based on “balance and avoiding any alignment.” The Iraqi premier said his country seeks to improve relations with Iran “based on non-intervention in domestic affairs of the two countries.”

Later, Khamenei received al-Kadhimi and told him Iran was determined to retaliate against the U.S. for killing Soleimani, the supreme leader’s website said. “They killed your guests at your home and confessed to the crime openly,” he said.

However, Khamenei — who has final say on all state matters in Iran — said Iran would not intervene in Iraq’s internal affairs.

Khamenei urged Iraq to implement a January bill in parliament calling for American forces to be expelled from Iraq, saying their “presence causes insecurity.”

He said the U.S. does not want a powerful government in Iraq, where the government is “supported by the vote of the majority.”

“In the true sense of the word, the U.S. is an enemy and does not support an independent, powerful Iraq,” Khamenei said.

A former intelligence chief backed by Washington, al-Kadhimi took office in May after playing a significant role for years in the war against the Islamic State group, which was declared defeated in Iraq in 2017.

The Iraqi prime minister had planned a visit to Saudi Arabia on Monday, before his trip to Tehran, but postponed it following news that Saudi King Salman was admitted to a hospital in the capital, Riyadh.

Iran sees Iraq as a possible route to bypass U.S. sanctions that President Donald Trump re-imposed on Tehran in 2018, after pulling America out of the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

Last year, Iran’s exports to Iraq amounted to nearly $9 billion, the official IRNA news agency reported Tuesday. It said the two nations will discuss increasing that amount to $20 billion.

Since the outbreak of the coronavirus, religious tourism between Iraq and Iran has stopped. Before the pandemic, some 5 million tourists — bringing in nearly $5 billion a year — visited Shiite holy sites in the two countries.

Under former dictator Saddam Hussein, Iraq waged an eight-year war in the 1980s against Iran, a conflict that left nearly 1 million killed on both sides.

Interpol later said it wouldn’t consider Iran’s request, meaning Trump faces no danger of arrest. However, the charges underscore the heightened tensions between Iran and the United States since Trump unilaterally withdrew America from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers.

Tehran prosecutor Ali Alqasimehr said Trump and 35 others whom Iran accuses of involvement in the Jan. 3 strike that killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad face “murder and terrorism charges,” the state-run IRNA news agency reported.

Alqasimehr did not identify anyone else sought other than Trump, but stressed that Iran would continue to pursue his prosecution even after his presidency ends.

Alqasimehr also was quoted as saying that Iran requested a “red notice” be put out for Trump and the others, which represents the highest-level arrest request issued by Interpol. Local authorities generally make the arrests on behalf of the country that requests it. The notices cannot force countries to arrest or extradite suspects, but can put government leaders on the spot and limit suspects’ travel.

After receiving a request, Interpol meets by committee and discusses whether or not to share the information with its member states. Interpol has no requirement for making any of the notices public, though some do get published on its website.

Interpol later issued a statement saying its guidelines for notices forbids it from “any intervention or activities of a political” nature.

Interpol “would not consider requests of this nature,” it said.

Brian Hook, the U.S. special representative for Iran, dismissed the arrest warrant announcement during a news conference in Saudi Arabia on Monday.

“It’s a propaganda stunt that no one takes seriously and makes the Iranians look foolish,” Hook said.

The U.S. killed Soleimani, who oversaw the Revolutionary Guard’s expeditionary Quds Force, and others in the January strike near Baghdad International Airport. It came after months of rising tensions between the two countries. Iran retaliated with a ballistic missile strike targeting American troops in Iraq.

Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report.

The statement significantly raised the death toll in Sunday’s incident from what was reported just hours earlier, when Iran’s state media said at least one sailor was killed.

The Konarak, a Hendijan-class support ship, which was taking part in the exercise, was too close to a target during an exercise on Sunday when the incident happened, the reports said. The vessel had been putting targets out for other ships to target. The media said the missile struck the vessel accidentally.

The friendly fire incident took place near the port of Jask, some 1,270 kilometers (790 miles) southeast of Tehran, in the Gulf of Oman, state TV said.

A local hospital admitted 12 sailors and treated another three with slight wounds, the state-run IRNA news agency reported.

Iranian media said the Konarak had been overhauled in 2018 and was able to launch sea and anti-ship missiles. The Dutch-made, 47-meter (155-foot) vessel was in service since 1988 and had capacity of 40 tons. It usually carries a crew of 20 sailors.

Iran towed the Konarak into a nearby naval base after the strike. A photograph released by the Iranian army showed burn marks and some damage to the vessel, though the military did not immediately offer detailed photographs of the site of the missile’s impact.

Iran regularly holds exercises in the region, which is close to the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20% of the world’s oil passes. The U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, which monitors the region, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Iranian media rarely report on mishaps during exercises by the country’s armed forces, signaling the severity of the incident. It also comes amid months of heightened tensions between Iran and the U.S. since President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers in 2018 and imposed crushing sanctions on the country.

It marks the second serious incident involving a misfired missile by Iran’s armed forces this year. In January, after attacking U.S. forces in Iraq with ballistic missiles, Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard accidentally shot down a Ukrainian jetliner, killing all 176 people on board.

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Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.

Iran separately summoned the Swiss ambassador, who looks out for America’s interests in the country, to complain about Trump’s threat coming amid months of escalating attacks between the two countries.

While the coronavirus pandemic temporarily paused those tensions, Iran has since begun pushing back against the Trump administration’s maximum pressure policy both militarily and diplomatically. The Guard also launched Iran’s first military satellite Wednesday, unveiling a previously secret space program.

Speaking to state television Thursday, Guard Gen. Hossein Salami warned his forces “will answer any action by a decisive, effective and quick counteraction.”

“We have ordered our naval units at sea that if any warships or military units from the naval force of America’s terrorist army wants to jeopardize our commercial vessels or our combat vessels, they must target those (American) warships or naval units,” Salami said.

The latest dispute comes after the U.S. Navy said last week that 11 Guard naval gunboats had carried out “dangerous and harassing approaches” to American Navy and Coast Guard vessels in the Persian Gulf. The Americans said they used a variety of nonlethal means to warn off the Iranian boats, and they eventually left. Iran, meanwhile, accused the U.S. of sparking the incident, without offering evidence.

Iran has had tense encounters at sea for years with the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of all oil passes. The U.S. has patrolled the area to protect global shipping for decades, something Iran describes as akin to it patrolling the Gulf of Mexico.

Trump on Wednesday, facing a collapsing global energy market and the pandemic at home amid his re-election campaign, tweeted out a warning to Iran that he ordered the Navy to “shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at sea.”

“We don’t want their gunboats surrounding our boats, and traveling around our boats and having a good time,” Trump told reporters Wednesday evening at the White House. “We’re not going to stand for it. … They’ll shoot them out of the water.”

The International Crisis Group, noting the tensions, urged both countries to create a deconfliction hotline to avoid a possible military confrontation.

“In the absence of a major diplomatic breakthrough, an indirect military communications channel could go some way toward ensuring, at least, that a single incident will not spark a wider conflagration,” it said in a report Thursday.

Iran in the past has rejected idea of a hotline.

Meanwhile, the Guard surprised analysts by sending a satellite into space on Wednesday from a previously unused launch pad and with a new system. While Iran stresses its program is peaceful, Western nations fear such a program will help Iran build intercontinental ballistic missiles.

State television on Thursday said Iran received signals from the satellite, without elaborating. While American officials haven’t acknowledged the satellite reached orbit, open-source data from the U.S. military suggested the “Noor,” or “Light” satellite now orbited the Earth.

Uzi Rubin, fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security and the founder of Israel’s missile defense program, said the launch showed the Guard’s “further gain in wresting for power and in building its own state within a state.”

“The very act of launching a military satellite in the midst of the coronavirus crisis that is affecting Iran too is a statement of self confidence and perseverance by the ayatollahs to the West but mainly to its own population,” Rubin said.

Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writer Josef Federman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.