Washington (CNN) Iran's ambassador to the United Nations accused the US Tuesday of engaging in "psychological warfare," citing President Donald Trump's public threats and his administration's military maneuvers.

"These are all psychological warfare in our opinion. We are not in the business of trying to create conflict in our neighborhood, because nobody is going to have benefit from such a conflict in our region except for a few -- as I explained earlier -- some people in Washington and some countries in our neighborhood," Majid Takht Ravanchi told CNN's John Berman on "New Day."

The ambassador was responding to a report from The New York Times that said acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan recently presented a plan to top national security officials that would send as many as 120,000 US troops to the Middle East in the event that Iran strikes American forces in the region or speeds up its development of nuclear weapons.

The Times said it's unknown whether Trump had been briefed on the plan, but noted that Shanahan discussed it days after the Trump administration cited "specific and credible" intelligence last week that suggested Iranian forces and proxies were targeting US forces in Syria, Iraq and at sea.

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