Iran has warned that any renewed conflict with the United States could drag on longer than the previous round, as diplomatic efforts to de-escalate are repeatedly overshadowed by threats from the US and Israel to resume strikes.
"A potential future war could last longer than the previous conflict, and the American president would not be in a position to dictate the timing or the conditions of its conclusion," said Iranian army spokesman Mohammad Akraminia, as cited by state television.
His remarks came after US President Donald Trump reiterated on Sunday his threat to resume strikes on Iran, telling a campaign rally that he might have to give Tehran "the hammer" at an unspecified point.
"And the only reason why I'm not finished with Iran is I want to be nice. I want to try and save all those lives if I can ... But at some point we're going to have to give them the hammer," Trump told supporters in Iowa ahead of Tuesday's midterm elections.
Trita Parsi, executive vice-president at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said the US elections will have "a significant impact" on the trajectory of the Iran conflict, warning Trump could take "an even more reckless approach" if Republicans suffer losses.
Parsi told Al Jazeera that a "humiliation at the polls" could lead Trump to double down.
"There will also be pressure on him from the Israelis in particular, because if the Democrats take the House and the Senate, they will be in a position to be able to create significant obstacles for Trump to continue this war; they can stop funding it. They will control the purse at that point," he said.
US media reported that Trump earlier had a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday over whether and when to ramp up combat operations against Iran.
Axios quoted US and Israeli officials as saying the two leaders discussed the state of negotiations with Tehran, with Netanyahu pressing Trump to strike Iran immediately after midterms while Trump favored allowing diplomatic talks to run first.
Top military and political officials in Iran have warned against any new attack. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Iran is ready for both defense and diplomacy, and that the final outcome hinges on Washington's answers to the "Iranian questions".
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on Sunday echoed a warning issued a day earlier by Iran's Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei.
"In a conflict with America, there are no geographical limitations," IRGC spokesman Hossein Mohebbi said.
Araghchi said on Saturday that Iranian negotiators were in Qatar for talks on a proposal that could reopen the Strait of Hormuz "within two days" — a scaled-back version of an earlier "seven-day plan" to build mutual trust — if the US meets several conditions.
The negotiators departed Qatar on Sunday, though not because of difficulties in the negotiations, an official briefed on the talks said on Monday, Reuters reported.
Gulf nations, meanwhile, were braced for the possibility of escalation. In the most intense phase of the war, which began in late February with US-Israeli strikes on Iran, Tehran retaliated with missile and drone attacks across the region.
Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to the president of the United Arab Emirates, said on Sunday that the UAE hoped negotiations would yield a breakthrough but was preparing for the worst.
The war had made it "a watershed year" for the region and the world, he said.
Acknowledging that US and Iranian stances "are far apart", he told a security forum in Bahrain that the current crisis requires "a lot of wisdom", while military solutions "will only complicate the current very complicated situation".
"It is not the interest of the region to go through another round ... But I think we're also, as we've shown before, braced for the worst," he said.
Agencies contributed to this story.
