DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran’s foreign minister issued the most direct threat yet Wednesday against the United States after Tehran’s bloody crackdown on protesters, warning the Islamic Republic will be “firing back with everything we have if we come under renewed attack.”

The comments by Abbas Araghchi, who saw his invitation to the World Economic Forum in Davos rescinded over the killings, comes as an American aircraft carrier group moves westward toward the Middle East from Asia. American fighter jets and other equipment appears to be moving in the Mideast after a major U.S. military deployment in the Caribbean saw troops seize Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro.

Meanwhile, an Iranian Kurdish separatist group in Iraq claimed Iran targeted one of its bases in a drone and missile attack that killed at least one fighter. Iran did not immediately acknowledge the attack, which would be the first foreign operation Tehran has launched since the protests started.

Araghchi made the threat in an opinion article published by The Wall Street Journal. In it, the foreign minister contended “the violent phase of the unrest lasted less than 72 hours” and sought again to blame armed demonstrators for the violence. Videos that have slipped out of Iran despite an internet shutdown appear to show security forces repeatedly using live fire to target apparently unarmed protesters, something unaddressed by Araghchi.

“Unlike the restraint Iran showed in June 2025, our powerful armed forces have no qualms about firing back with everything we have if we come under renewed attack,” Araghchi wrote, referring to the 12-day war launched by Israel on Iran in June. “This isn’t a threat, but a reality I feel I need to convey explicitly, because as a diplomat and a veteran, I abhor war.”

He added: “An all-out confrontation will certainly be ferocious and drag on far, far longer than the fantasy timelines that Israel and its proxies are trying to peddle to the White House. It will certainly engulf the wider region and have an impact on ordinary people around the globe.”

Araghchi’s comments likely refer to Iran’s short- and medium-range missiles. The Islamic Republic relied on ballistic missiles to target Israel in the war and left its stockpile of the shorter-range missiles unused, something that could be fired to target American bases and interests in the Persian Gulf. Already, there have been some restrictions on U.S. diplomats traveling to American bases in both Kuwait and Qatar.

Mideast nations, particularly diplomats from Gulf Arab countries, had lobbied Trump not to attack. Last week, Iran shut its airspace, likely in anticipation of a strike.

The USS Abraham Lincoln, which had been in the South China Sea in recent days, had passed through the Strait of Malacca, a key waterway connecting the South China Sea and Indian Ocean, by Tuesday, ship-tracking data showed.

A U.S. Navy official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the aircraft carrier and three accompanying destroyers were heading west.

While naval and other defense officials stopped short of saying the carrier strike group was headed to the Middle East, its current heading and location in the Indian Ocean means it is only days away from moving into the region. Meanwhile, U.S. military images released in recent days showed F-15E Strike Eagles arriving in the Mideast and forces in the region moving a HIMARS missile system, the type used with great success by Ukraine after Russia’s full-scale invasion in the country in 2022.

The National Army of Kurdistan, the armed wing of the Kurdistan Freedom Party, or PAK, claimed Iran launched an attack against one of its bases near Irbil, some 320 kilometers (200 miles) north of Baghdad. It said one fighter had been killed, releasing mobile phone footage of a fire in the predawn darkness.

Iranian state television, which has confirmed attacks on the group in the past, did not acknowledge the assault.

A handful of Iranian Kurdish dissident or separatist groups — some with armed wings — have long found a safe haven in northern Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region, where their presence has been a point of friction between the central government in Baghdad and Tehran. The PAK has claimed it launched attacks in Iran as a crackdown on the demonstrations took place, something reported by semiofficial Iranian news agencies as well.

The death toll from the protests has reached at least 4,519 people, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said. The agency has been accurate throughout the years on demonstrations and unrest in Iran, relying on a network of activists inside the country that confirms all reported fatalities. The Associated Press has been unable to independently assess the death toll.

The death toll exceeds that of any other round of protest or unrest in Iran in decades, and recalls the chaos surrounding the 1979 revolution that brought the Islamic Republic into being. Although there have been no protests for days, there are fears the death toll could increase significantly as information gradually emerges from a country still under a government-imposed shutdown of the internet since Jan. 8.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Saturday that the protests had left “several thousand” people dead and blamed the United States. It was the first indication from an Iranian leader of the extent of the casualties.

More than 26,300 people have been arrested, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency. Comments from officials have led to fears of some of those detained being put to death in Iran, one of the world’s top executioners. That and the killing of peaceful protesters have been two red lines laid down by Trump in the tensions.

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Associated Press writers Stella Martany in Irbil, Iraq, Konstantin Toropin in Washington and Elena Becatoros contributed to this report.

PARIS — France risks losing its third prime minister in 12 months on Monday, with incumbent François Bayrou facing a parliamentary confidence vote that he called but is widely expected to lose, heralding more instability for the European Union’s second-largest economy.

The 74-year-old centrist prime minister, appointed by President Emmanuel Macron just under nine months ago, is gambling that the vote will unite lawmakers in the sharply divided National Assembly behind proposed public spending cuts that Bayrou argues are needed to rein in France’s spiraling state deficit and debts.

But opposition lawmakers are vowing to instead use the opportunity to topple Bayrou and his minority government of centrist and right-wing ministers, an upheaval that would force Macron to begin what could be another arduous hunt for a replacement.

The National Assembly of 577 lawmakers is interrupting its summer recess for the extraordinary session that Bayrou requested, starting at 3 p.m. (1300 GMT; 0900 EDT) Monday.

After Bayrou delivers a speech that is expected to argue that belt-tightening is in the national interest, lawmakers will have their say before they vote either for or against his government — likely in the late afternoon or early evening. Lawmakers can also abstain.

Bayrou needs a majority of “for” votes to survive. If a majority votes against, France’s constitution decrees that Bayrou would have to submit his government’s resignation to Macron, plunging France into renewed crisis.

The 47-year-old president is paying a steep price for his stunning decision to dissolve the National Assembly in June 2024, triggering legislative elections that the French leader hoped would strengthen the hand of his pro-European centrist alliance in parliament’s lower house. But the gamble backfired, producing a splintered legislature with no dominant political bloc in power for the first time in France’s modern republic.

The political uncertainty has largely hobbled Macron’s domestic ambitions in his second and last presidential term that ends in 2027. Shorn of a workable majority in parliament for his centrist alliance, Macron has since rotated through three prime ministers, attempting to build consensus and stave off government collapse.

Macron’s protégé Gabriel Attal departed in September 2024, after the Paris Olympics and just eight months in the job. Attal was briefly followed by former Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, a conservative who became the shortest-serving prime minister in France’s modern republic when he was toppled by a no-confidence vote in December.

Macron then tapped his centrist ally Bayrou, a wily political veteran who, despite his experience, is now up against the same wall of unfavorable parliamentary mathematics in the National Assembly — where no single political grouping has sufficient seats to govern alone but can still pull the rug from under the government if they team up, targeting Bayrou together despite their sharp political differences.

Far-right and left-wing lawmakers who say they’ll vote against Bayrou’s government hold over 320 seats while centrists and allied conservatives have 210, making it seemingly impossible for the prime minister to survive.

Bayrou expressed frustration Sunday that bitter rivals on the opposite ends of the political spectrum in the National Assembly are ganging up against him.

“What’s the point of bringing down the government? These are political groups that not only don’t agree on anything but, far worse than that, are waging open civil war against each other,” he said in an interview with online media outlet Brut.

If Bayrou loses, Macron will again be forced to find a successor who’ll operate in the same precarious environment and face the same pressing budget problems that have dogged Bayrou and his predecessors. Macron himself has vowed to stay in office until the end of his term but risks becoming a lame duck domestically if political paralysis continues.

Under the French political system, the prime minister is appointed by the president, accountable to the parliament and is in charge of implementing domestic policy, notably economic measures. The president holds substantial powers over foreign policy and European affairs and is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces.

Arguing that sharp cuts are needed to repair public finances, Bayrou has proposed to cut 44 billion euros ($51 billion) in spending in 2026, after France’s deficit hit 5.8% of gross domestic product last year, way above the official EU target of 3%.

France is also faced with a massive debt crisis. At the end of the first quarter of 2025, France’s public debt stood at 3.346 trillion euros, or 114% of GDP. Debt servicing remains a major budget item, accounting for around 7% of state spending.

Bayrou’s plan, which includes removing two public holidays, has been slammed by his political rivals, who now have a golden opportunity to bring him down.