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President Donald Trump spoke after Iran launched missiles on bases in Iraq where American troops are stationed. USA Today fact-checked his assertions. USA TODAY

WASHINGTON President Donald Trump issued another tweeted threat to Iran on Wednesday, saying he would retaliate if the Tehran government struck again at U.S. interests in Iraq.

"Upon information and belief, Iran or its proxies are planning a sneak attack on U.S. troops and/or assets in Iraq," Trump tweeted. "If this happens, Iran will pay a very heavy price, indeed!"

Trump, who did not detail the plot, made the threat less than an hour after receiving a foreign intelligence briefing at the White House.

Later at abriefing, Trump said the intelligence indicating an attack was sound.

"We just have information that they were planning something and its very good information," Trump said.

He added: "Were just saying dont do it. Dont do it. It'd be a very bad thing for them if they did."

Iranian-backed militias in Iraq continually threaten to attack U.S. and allied forces, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly. Threats arrive in a daily stream.

Some of the more visible threats have been issued by the Kataib Hezbollah militia, the group responsible for rocket attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq that have killed American troops and contractors.

One such attack,onMarch 11,killed two U.S. troops.

The militia recently posted a video called Hunting Crows, which shows rockets being fired at night and purports to be a training exercise for attacking U.S. troops, the source said. Another group has threatened that U.S. forces that arrive by air will be sent home dead.

Relations between the U.S. and Iran have been tense for decades, but especially in recent months.

In early January, Trump authorized a drone strike that killed a high-ranking Iranian general,Qassem Soleimani.

The strike was part of a tit-for-tat that included Iranian attacks on U.S.-backed Iraqi militias in Iraq. After Soleimani's death, the Iranians launched an airstrike on a military base in Iraq that housed several American troops, injuring many but not killing anyone.

The new threats come as both the United States and Iran battlethe spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

More: Exclusive: Americans say Soleimani's killing made US less safe, Trump 'reckless' on Iran

The U.S. and Iran have also exchanged harshwords during the epidemic.

Even before the coronavirus, Iran's economy was being battered by U.S. sanctions. Officials in Tehran have criticized the U.S. for maintaining those sanctions in the face of the crisis.

Late last month,Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated that Iran had refused American aid for addressing the coronavirus threat. At the same time, Pompeo criticized Iranian leaderAyatollah Ali Khameneifor spreading conspiracy theories that the United States caused the pandemic.

Trump did not explain what he meant byinformation and belief in a new Iranian plot, but analysts pointed out that those are legal phrases.

"'Information and belief'isnt an intelligence term," tweeted attorney George Conway, the spouse of Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway. "Its a phrase used in legal pleadings to make allegations, which is why Individual-1 is so familiar with it."

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Donald Trump threatens Iran - again - if it attacks U.S. in Iraq

Trump held a virtual rally with Rush Limbaugh and warned Iran

The president of the United States is the most prominent statesmen in the country, but Donald Trump has disregarded that decorum on more than one occasion.

He casually dropped the F-bomb while holding a virtual mega, MAGA rally with Rush Limbaugh on Friday.

If you fuck around with us, if you do something bad to us, we are gonna do things to you that have never been done before, Trump uttered on the airwaves.

Read More: Families of Jackie Robinson, MLK blast Trump for using their images in ad

The colorful comment was made in regard to the tense relations with Iran. On Thursday, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on Irans banking sector.

U.S. President Donald Trump gestures on the Truman Balcony after returning to the White House from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on October 05, 2020 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Our sanctions are directed at the regime and its corrupt officials that have used the wealth of the Iranian people to fuel a radical, revolutionary cause that has brought untold suffering across the Middle East and beyond, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, according to Yahoo.

Pompeo continued, Our maximum economic pressure campaign will continue until Iran is willing to conclude a comprehensive negotiation that addresses the regimes malign behavior.

Limbaugh, the stalwart of conservative talk radio, did not censor the president. He was instead effusive about how Trump is the strongest, most unwavering leader.

However, FCC regulations has strict guidelines on obscenity, indecency and profanity.

Read More: Trump coughs as he tells Fox News hes healthy, ready for rallies

During the animated conversation, Trump hailed Regeneron Pharmaceuticals antibody cocktail as a cure. He was given the drug as part of his treatment for COVID-19.

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People are going to get immediately better, like I did, the president said.

A day later, I was fine, Trump claimed despite White House aides and officials from Walter Reed Hospital stating he was not yet in perfect health. This is better than the vaccine, and its going out as we speak.

It was a week ago that the president announced that he and first lady Melania Trump had fallen ill with the coronavirus. He regaled Limbaugh of his boasts about a quick recovery from the deadly contagion.

Im free. I feel perfect, Trump said. Im not taking anything. It was primarily this one drug.

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Trump tells Iran if you fk with us, well do things never done before

At least three other American citizens of Iranian descent have been held in Iran for years.

In the past decade, Iran has frequently pursued its foreign policy goals through detention and hostage taking of dual nationals. This latest imprisonment of Emad Shargi is consistent with this track record, said Hadi Ghaemi, the director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran, a New York-based advocacy group.

As the Biden administration attempts to define how to deal with Iran, which could include a return to the nuclear deal, families of the imprisoned Americans are calling for the administration to prioritize returning their loved ones in any negotiations.

Besides Mr. Shargi, those held include Baqer Namazi, a former Unicef official, his son Siamak Namazi, a businessman, and Morad Tahbaz, an environmentalist entrepreneur.

Mr. Trumps administration engaged with Iran in prisoner swap deals that won the release of two American citizens held by the Iranians Xiyue Wang, a Princeton graduate student, and Michael R. White, a Navy veteran. The other imprisoned Americans are officially regarded by Iran as Iranian citizens, despite their United States passports.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken announced on Monday that the United States would join 58 countries in an initiative aimed at creating a universal approach to confront state sponsored hostage taking and arbitrary detentions.

We will work with our allies, many of which also have nationals currently detained by the Iranian government, to seek their release and to stand up to Irans disgraceful practice of using unjust detentions of foreign nationals as a political tool, the State Department said through a representative.

When speaking of her husband, Ms. Amidi Shargi recited one of her poems about an angel with broken wings who after a long period of sitting still discovers that resilience can help him fly again.

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They Thought, Why Not Iran? The Decision Upended Their Lives. - The New York Times

Throughout the 2020 presidential campaign and the transition, Mr. Biden insisted he would lift sanctions imposed by President Donald J. Trump only if Iran returned to the limits on nuclear production that it observed until 2019.

Under the original 2015 deal, Iran shipped 97 percent of its nuclear fuel out of the country and agreed to sharp limits on new production that would essentially assure it would take it a year or more to produce enough material for a single weapon. (It would take even longer to build a weapon.) In return, world powers lifted international sanctions that had choked the Iranian economy.

The New Washington

Feb. 19, 2021, 7:17 p.m. ET

But over the objections of his first secretary of state and his first defense secretary both of whom were fired Mr. Trump restored American sanctions in 2018, arguing that the deal was flawed and that economic penalties would eventually break the government in Tehran, or force it into a new agreement. His move infuriated the other nations that brokered the accord with Iran after years of stop-and-start negotiations.

Over the past year, Iran has unabashedly compiled and enriched nuclear fuel beyond the limits negotiated in the 2015 agreement. Its leaders have accused the United States of being the first to violate its terms and vowed to come back into compliance only after America reversed course and allowed it to sell oil and conduct banking operations around the world.

Publicly, the Iranian foreign minister, Mr. Zarif, has cast doubt that Tehran will agree to talks before the American sanctions are lifted. In a tweet on Thursday, he played down Irans repeated violations of the accord as mere remedial measures.

A senior Biden administration official said that closing that gap would be a painstaking process.

The offer comes days before a Sunday deadline when Iran has said it will bar international inspectors from visiting undeclared nuclear facilities and conducting unannounced inspections of nuclear sites, unless the United States lifts sanctions reimposed by the Trump administration. The threat would not bar inspectors from declared nuclear-related facilities that are monitored on a regular basis. Still, the ability to inspect anywhere, on demand, by the International Atomic Energy Agency, is mandated by the nuclear deal.

And it is crucial to the international communitys confidence that Iran is not rapidly reconstituting its ability to make a weapon. There has been growing circumstantial evidence, much of it provided by Israeli intelligence, that the country never fully disclosed the sites involved in its program, dating back more than two decades.

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Biden Administration Formally Offers to Restart Nuclear Talks With Iran - The New York Times

Saudi and Emirati officials, for their part, were silent on Friday. Watching the Biden administrations outreach to Tehran with resignation, the two Gulf States which were outraged at being excluded from the last negotiations can only hope that the United States will keep its promises to consider Gulf interests in the talks, analysts said.

We just have to trust the new administration, said Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, an Emirati political scientist. We dont have any option. They really are determined to reach out to Iran, so theres no way that anybody could stop them.

But he acknowledged there could be something to gain, saying, If the end result is less confrontation with Iran, a less aggressive Iran, a less expansionist Iran, its a dream of a sort.

The Israeli governments reticence reflects a less combative approach to the Biden administrations policymaking than with President Barack Obamas, at least initially, said Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence.

Practically, they will not confront the Biden administration directly, he said. They will wait a little bit to see whether the Iranians are reacting and how the negotiations develop.

But behind the scenes, Israel is already lobbying the United States for an agreement that is much tougher on Iran. The Mossad chief, Yossi Cohen, and a team of experts will soon travel to Washington to brief senior American officials about what they see as the threats still posed by Iran, hoping to persuade the United States to hold out for harsher restrictions on Iran in any deal, two senior Israeli officials said.

Israeli intelligence suggests that Iran has blatantly violated the terms of the original nuclear deal and is still taking steps to develop a nuclear warhead, the officials said, claims that Iran denies.

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In Israel and the Gulf, Reaction to U.S. Push for Iran Talks Is Muted but Wary - The New York Times