Iran’s head Ayatollah is threatening the United States with terrorist attacks around the world: Iran to hit U.S. interests if attacked.

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran’s supreme leader said Thursday that if the United States were to attack Iran, the country would respond by striking U.S. interests all over the world — the latest sharp exchange in an escalating standoff between the two countries.

The comments by Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei came on the same day that another top official, Tehran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Javad Zarif, warned in a column in The New York Times that efforts to isolate Iran would backfire on the United States, increasing sectarian tensions in the volatile Middle East, including Iraq.

The United States is reaping “the expected bitter fruits of its ill-conceived adventurism,” he said.

“But rather than face these unpleasant facts, the United States administration is trying to sell an escalated version of the same failed policy. It does this by trying to make Iran its scapegoat and fabricating evidence of Iranian activities in Iraq,” he said.