Iranian official tweets link listing Trump’s properties after US president threatens attacks on cultural sites
- Message from Hesameddin Ashena, adviser to President Hassan Rowhani, did not contain overt threat or call anyone to commit specific action
- Tensions continue to mount after US killing of General Qassem Soleimani, whose successor has vowed to expel American forces from Middle East
Following US President Donald Trump’s Twitter threat to target cultural sites in Iran, an official in Tehran has disseminated a link to a webpage listing the Trump Organisation’s global real estate holdings, including the Mar-a-Lago club on Palm Beach.
The Sunday morning tweet was from the account of Hesameddin Ashena, an Iranian politician who serves as an adviser to President Hassan Rowhani. It included a decades-old quote from the late Ayatollah Khomeini, plus a link to a Forbes.com webpage, updated in September 2019, with the headline “What’s Donald Trump really worth?”
Ashena’s tweets followed Trump’s threats to attack Iranian cultural sites if Tehran retaliates against Americans for the air strike that killed Iran’s top military commander, General Qassem Soleimani, last week.
That warning from Trump came in the third of a trio of tweets the president fired off from Mar-a-Lago on Saturday evening in which he said he had a list of “52 Iranian sites” including “some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture”.
On Sunday night, aboard the return flight to Washington, Trump reiterated his threat to strike Iranian cultural sites.
“They’re allowed to kill our people. They’re allowed to torture and maim our people. They’re allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people,” he said. “And we’re not allowed to touch their cultural sites. It doesn’t work that way.”