Iran just told its military there are no limits left on where it hits back

Donald Trump says he can wipe out Iran's last nuclear sites in ten minutes.

He said it a few hours ago, at a Halloween party at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

Two days before the US midterm elections.

Donald Trump says quote "We've knocked out their nuclear. We still have to take care of, I would say, one or two sites, but we can do that in ten minutes."

He named one of them. Pickaxe Mountain. A hardened underground complex.

He said we could look at Pickaxe Mountain, and take care of it, and do it all very quickly.

Here's the problem. Iran says there's no nuclear work at Pickaxe Mountain at all.

So the two sides can't even agree on what's left to bomb.

Donald Trump also says the US has already knocked out Iran's navy, its air force and its anti-aircraft systems.

Which would leave only the underground sites standing. The ones built so bombs can't reach them easily.

So why say all this now?

This war has been running eight months, since strikes on 28 February. The US hasn't hit Iran since the start of September. Donald Trump has said he'd hold off until after the midterms.

Which are in two days.

And at the same time, he's talking about a deal.

He said Iran wants one. He said Iran isn't reliable, that they make a deal, and then they back out.

But there's real diplomacy going on behind that line.

Qatari mediators landed in Tehran a day ago. The US Vice President, JD Vance, sent a letter to Mohsen Rezaei, who runs Iran's Supreme National Security Council.

Mohsen Rezaei says their tone has completely changed since that letter. He calls that a good sign.

Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, says Donald Trump hasn't decided on fresh strikes yet. He says the US would take a diplomatic deal if it covers American security concerns.

But at the G20 foreign ministers' meeting in Georgia, he also said this: the US can hit its military goals whenever it wants to.

Now here's Iran's answer. And it came from the top.

A few hours ago, Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran's Supreme Leader, told his top military commanders something blunt. Any threat gets met with an immediate, forceful response. No geographic limits.

He told them to update the target list. To cover every tangible and intangible asset belonging to what he called the American-Zionist enemy.