Iranian president says Iran does not seek war with Israel but will deliver 'appropriate response' after attack

LAST UPDATE | 14 hrs ago

PRESIDENT MASOUD PEZESHKIAN today said that Iran did not seek war with Israel but was ready to deliver “an appropriate response” to strikes this week on Iranian military sites.

“We do not seek war but we will defend the rights of our nation and country,” Pezeshkian told a cabinet meeting, adding that Iran “will give an appropriate response to the aggression of the Zionist regime.”

Yesterday, Israel conducted air strikes on military sites in Iran in response to Tehran’s October 1 attack on Israel, itself retaliation for the killing of Iran-backed militant leaders and a Revolutionary Guards commander.

Israel has warned Tehran against responding.

Pezeshkian blamed the soaring regional tensions on Israel’s “aggression” and US support for the country, which Tehran does not recognise.

“If the aggressions of the Zionist regime and its crimes continue, the tensions will spread,” said the Iranian president.

Pezeshkian added that the United States had “promised to end the war in return for our restraint, but they did not keep their promise,” Pezeshkian added.

Earlier today, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared that his country’s “precise and powerful” strikes on Iran were a success, as Israeli forces continue their bombardment of Gaza and Lebanon. 

The previous day’s strikes by Israeli planes on military targets in Iran had fed fears that the Middle East was spiralling towards an even wider conflict and triggered global calls for restraint.

But Iranian leaders played down their importance, saying the strikes had caused only limited damage and killed four soldiers, while Netanyahu stressed that the raids had served their purpose of avenging an earlier Iranian missile barrage against Israel.

“The attack in Iran was precise and powerful, achieving all of its objectives,” Netanyahu said, in a speech marking the official Hebrew calendar anniversary of the Hamas attack on 7 October last year.

Israel said the strikes were in retaliation for an attack by Iran on 1 October, which fired about 200 missiles at Israel, though most were intercepted by the country’s air defences.

Today, Iran called for an urgent United Nations Security Council meeting to condemn Israel’s air strikes on the Islamic republic.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi sent a letter to the UN chief and the head of the Council “demanding an urgent meeting of the Security Council to take a decisive position in condemning this aggression”, a ministry statement said.

Netanyahu said: “We kept our promise. The air force attacked Iran and hit Iran’s defence capabilities and missile production.”

His speech was interrupted by shouting from relatives of victims of Hamas’s 7 October attack in the crowd. Netanyahu stood silently for more than a minute during the ceremony, which was broadcast live.

 One of the protesters repeatedly shouted, “My father was killed”.

There has been public and diplomatic pressure on the Israeli premier’s administration to do more to strike a deal to secure the release of the remaining captives held in Gaza. 

‘Painful concessions’

Israeli spy chief David Barnea is scheduled to head to Qatar today for talks aimed at restarting negotiations towards a hostage deal.

Families of the hostages have called on the Israeli government to broker an agreement in the wake of the killing of Hamas’ leader Yahya Sinwar earlier this month.

Israeli and US officials as well as some analysts said Sinwar had been a key obstacle to a deal allowing for the freeing of up to 97 hostages still held by militants in Gaza.

Earlier today, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said “painful concessions” would be needed to secure their release and that military action alone would not achieve the country’s aims.

Despite talk of negotiations, Israel continued to fight in Gaza and Lebanon.

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Dense smoke hung over the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut today after a night of bombardment in the southern suburbs, while there were reports of strikes in and around the southern cities of Sidon, Tyre and Nabatiyeh.

Lebanon’s health ministry said at least eight people were killed and 25 others wounded near Sidon.

The war has left at least 1,615 people dead in Lebanon since 23 September, according to an AFP tally based on official figures, though the real number is likely to be higher due to gaps in the data.

The Israeli military today claimed it killed 70 Hezbollah fighters and struck 120 targets in southern Lebanon, while losing four of its own soldiers in ground fighting. It warned residents that they must evacuate more villages said to be housing Hezbollah sites.

“For your safety, you must evacuate your homes immediately and move to the north of the Awali River,” military spokesman Avichay Adraee said in a social media post. The Awali is the northern border of Lebanon’s southern governorate.

‘Gaza is unbearable’

Heavy bombing also continued in the densely populated Palestinian territory of Gaza. 

Palestinian medical officials said Israeli strikes on the town of Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza late last night killed at least 22 people, with 11 women and two children among the dead. 

It said another 15 people were wounded and that the death toll could rise.

The Israeli military claimed it carried out a precise strike on militants in a structure in Beit Lahiya and took steps to avoid harming civilians. It disputed what it said were “numbers published by the media”.

Israel is carrying out daily strikes across Gaza, even as it wages war with the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon.

The International Committee of the Red Cross on Saturday said that ongoing Israeli evacuation orders and restrictions on the entry of essential supplies to the north had left the civilian population in “horrific circumstances”.

“Many civilians are currently unable to move, trapped by fighting, destruction or physical constraint and now lack access to even basic medical care,” it said.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed deep concern for the fate of Gaza’s civilians.

“The plight of Palestinian civilians trapped in north Gaza is unbearable,” Guterres’s spokesman said.

Israel several weeks ago began an ongoing major operation in the north of Gaza, in particular around Jabalia and its neighbouring refugee camp.

“The Secretary-General is shocked by the harrowing levels of death, injury and destruction in the north, with civilians trapped under rubble, the sick and wounded going without life-saving health care and families lacking food and shelter.”

At the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City, Jihad Muqat mourned the death of his wife and two baby daughters whose bodies were pulled from under the rubble in Jabalia camp.

“My darling Lulu, she was three and a half years old and Sama was 12 days old,” he said, adding that he’d already had to bury his two-year-old Lara earlier in the war.

The current conflict in Gaza has been ongoing since Hamas’s attack on 7 October last year, which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.

At least 42,924 Palestinians, a majority of them civilians, have been killed in the Israeli offensive on Gaza, according to figures from the Palestinian health ministry, which the UN considers reliable.

The war has since drawn in Iran-backed groups across the region, most notably Hezbollah in Lebanon, but also militias in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

Iran’s missile barrage and Israel’s air strikes have raised concerns of a direct war but Tehran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei took to social media to say that the attack “should neither be exaggerated or minimised”.

Earlier, the Iranian armed forces general staff said that while it was “reserving its legal and legitimate right to respond at the appropriate moment, Iran is prioritising the establishment of a lasting ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon”.

© AFP 2024

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