IRANIAN communists urged progressives across the world to unite against another “horrific war” in the Middle East as the US appears hell-bent on military intervention against Iran.

US President Donald Trump and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani traded insults yesterday after the US imposed sanctions on Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Mr Rouhani hit back by accusing his US counterpart of being “afflicted by a mental disorder” and branded the sanctions “outrageous and idiotic.”

The US president responded angrily through his preferred platform of Twitter: “Iran leadership doesn’t understand the words ‘nice’ or ‘compassion’, they never have.

“Any attack by Iran on anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force. In some areas overwhelming will mean obliteration,” he wrote.

Hawkish US National Security Adviser John Bolton and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have denied that they want war with Iran but appear to be increasingly edging the region towards military conflict.

Mr Trump pulled back from launching a missile strike on Iranian targets last week after Iran downed a US spy drone that it alleged had encroached on its airspace.

The Tudeh Party of Iran warned that “inhumane” economic sanctions imposed by the US have created “a very difficult condition” for millions of Iranians and said “the current economic hardships … [are] the result of the regime’s decades-long pursuit of neoliberal policies in favour of the interests of grand capital in Iran.”

“History shows that the working people, both urban and rural, would be the first and foremost victims of any war and military conflict,” a party statement said.

Tudeh warned against regime change from external forces while stating that war would create the “ideal opportunity” for the Iranian regime to “intensify suppression and tyranny.”