A senior adviser to the Iranian government said war is “inevitable” if the United States does not lift sanctions against Iran, Saudi Arabia’s Al Arabiya reported Monday.

“If American people really don’t want to go to war with Iran, the US president should abandon the current course of policy in regard to sanctioning Iran. Otherwise, rising tensions automatically will drive us to an unavoidable war, sooner or later,” said Diako Hosseini, a senior analyst at the Center for Strategic Studies (CSS) in Tehran on Friday.

According to Al-Arabiya News, the CSS is “a think tank responsible for advising the Rouhani administration in Iran on foreign policy as well as internal affairs.” President Hassan Rouhani is the chief executive of the secular wing of Iran’s government and subservient to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Hosseini also said last week that “as long as America’s economic war against Iran continues, Iran does not give any guarantees that the tools it will use to counter this economic war will be merely economic tools.”

“It is not our problem if that is a cause for concern for other countries. If they are worried, they should push America to put an end to the economic war against Iran,” he said.

Hosseini’s threats included telling the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Friday that the UAE will be “wiped out from the map” if Iran goes to war.

“The wise action on your behalf is to be cautious about what you wish for,” the belligerent analyst told the UAE minister.

Maj. Gen. Mohammad Baqeri, chief of staff for the Iranian military, denied culpability in recent attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman and said on Monday that if Iran wants to blockade oil shipments, “it is militarily strong enough to do that fully and publicly.”