Baghdad, Iraq ? An Iraqi vice president threatened Tuesday to engulf the United States in a wider conflict if his country is attacked, urging Arabs outside Iraq to respond by striking at U.S. interests all over the world.

“We categorically believe that the aggression on Iraq is an aggression on all the Arab nations,” Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan said at a news conference in Amman, Jordan. He called on “all Arab and good people to confront the interests of the aggressors, their materials and humans, wherever they are.”

Arabs should use “all means” to respond, he said.

Ramadan’s exhortation was among the most confrontational made by senior Iraqi officials in response to growing fears of a U.S. attack. Although Iraq has long sought to elicit support from Arabs beyond its borders, it hasn’t before made such a public call to arms.