Iran would consider US political targets, along with the infrastructure of countries participating in a new war against it, as legitimate targets if another round of broad war includes assassinations of Iranian officials and the killing of civilians, a senior Iranian security official said late on Wednesday, according to the semi-official Fars News Agency, as reported by Al Mayadeen and by Anadolu Agency. The official said Iran has communicated this to its operational ranks.

The Tehran-based official said Iran assumes the United States and Israel will launch another attack and regards American diplomatic gestures as lacking credibility, a view the official said intensified after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio's October 7 speech in Athens, which Tehran sees as giving the war a historical and civilizational cover. The official claimed Iranian leaders have concluded that US Middle East policy is directed from Tel Aviv and that Israel will not allow a diplomatic solution — that is the official's claim about US policy, not an established fact.

The official said Iran already considers itself at war with the United States, and sees the US economic and naval blockade and the restrictions on air traffic as a continuation of the military aggression that began on February 28, when the US and Israel launched attacks on Iran. The official said there is strong pressure across Iranian society for decisive action to break the blockade on the basis of what Tehran calls legitimate defence.

Iran asked the UN Security Council on Wednesday to condemn the blockade and demand it be lifted, Al Mayadeen reported. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Sunday that Tehran's seven-day plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz remains on the table; Iran links reopening the strait to a ceasefire across all fronts, a US sanctions waiver on oil sales, and the release of $12 billion in frozen assets — yaani 12 billion dollars, roughly Rs 11 lakh crore at current rates, held abroad that Iran wants unfrozen.