A top military aide to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned that “harm” would come to the US if President-elect Donald Trump cancels the nuclear deal signed between Tehran and world powers last year in July, the country’s semi-official news agency Fars reported on Wednesday.

According to the report, in an interview with Iran’s state-run TV channel on Tuesday, Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi threatened the soon-to-be leader of the free world that there would be severe consequences if he succumbed to Israeli pressure on this issue.

“Any president who is empowered in the US is compelled to support the Zionists but annulment of the nuclear deal will be a strategic mistake,” he said, without specifying what the repercussions of such a move would be.

Safavi then urged America and its allies to join Iran in creating “regional peace and stability.”

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This echoed statements he made on Monday in a press conference in Tehran.

“We hope that the US president-elect will make a tangible turn on Iran and the region to uproot insecurity in the region,” Safavi told reporters, also expressing hope that Trump would withdraw US troops from Afghanistan and other parts of the Middle East. “Such a turn in the US president-elect is also possible, since the US is administered by a system and the system doesn’t allow the president to do whatever he wants.”

On Wednesday, however, as Fars reported, Khamenei reiterated pronouncements emanating from the country’s top echelons since November 8, according to which the Islamic Republic had no stake in the outcome of the presidential election, on the grounds that both Democrats and Republicans are and have been “equally hostile” to the regime in Tehran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

“We don’t have any judgment about the election since the US is the same US and during the past 37 years that the two parties held the power, they didn’t do any good to Iran and they permanently did evil things to the Iranian nation,” Khamenei said, addressing a large gathering in Isfahan. “Unlike some of those in the world who have either been mourning or celebrating the results of the US elections, we are neither mourning nor celebrating, and the results make no difference to us. We have no worries and by the grace of God, we are ready to face any possible eventuality.”

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani also said that the election would not affect his country, while issuing a warning to Trump, without calling him by name. “If a president is changed here and there, it has no impact on the will of Iran,” Rouhani said on Wednesday in a televised speech. “The world is not under the will of a single individual and party. The reality of the world will impose many things on extremists. Nobody should imagine it is possible to play with Iran.”

Yet, in an interview with The Algemeiner last week, an expert on Iran said the regime in Tehran feared it could be the “big loser” from Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday — a day after the US House of Representatives voted in favor of legislation to extend sanctions on the Islamic Republic for 10 years, to ensure its compliance with the nuclear deal — Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan declared, “Any delay, violation or return from the agreed path will entail high costs for them (the Americans) and they will be the main loser of any of their ignorant and proud measures.”

Dehqan, who made this statement while attending the inauguration of the 8th International Aviation Exhibition on Kish Island in the Persian Gulf, also lauded what he claimed has been Iran’s ability to make strides in military advancement, despite the sanctions.

As was reported in The Algemeiner in August, Iranian state TV broadcast live images of Russian-made, highly-advanced S-300 surface-to-air missiles being transported by trucks to the Fordo nuclear facility south of Tehran, leading to questions over the true purpose of the site, which Iran has argued was designed for peaceful “civilian” use. During the weapons delivery, Khamenei said in a speech, “Continued opposition and hype on the S-300 or the Fordo site are examples of the viciousness of the enemy. The S-300 system is a defense system, not an assault one, but the Americans did their best for Iran not to get hold of it.”

However, as The Algemeiner reported, one of Khamenei’s top advisers declared in September that Tehran’s backing of “resistance groups” — the name the Islamic Republic uses to describe terrorist organizations it supports, such as Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon — will remain steadfast.