Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian has said that Tehran expressed to the US through back channels that it does not want the Gaza war to escalate into a regional conflict while also warning escalation was inevitable if Israel didn’t stop its campaign.
“Over the past 40 days, messages have been exchanged between Iran and the US, via the US interests section at the Swiss embassy in Tehran,” Amirabdollahian said in an interview with Financial Times published on Friday.
“In response to the US, we said that Iran does not want the war to spread, but due to the approach adopted by the US and Israel in the region, if the crimes against the people of Gaza and the West Bank are not stopped, any possibility could be considered, and a wider conflict could prove inevitable,” he added.
The US has blamed Iran for attacks on US troops in Iraq and Syria that started in October due to President Biden’s support for the Israeli assault on Gaza, but Tehran has said it’s not responsible, and the US has never produced evidence to show Iran is directing the attacks.
Amirabdollahian said that the Shia militias in Iraq and Syria that are believed to be responsible for the attacks on US bases are not Iranian proxies. He said the same of Hezbollah, other Palestinian militants, and the Houthis in Yemen, according to Financial Times. But he warned the groups “are not indifferent towards the killing of their Muslim and Arab peers in Palestine.”
Amirabdollahian said the war had already “expanded in the region,” citing Houthis attacks on Israel and the fighting between Hezbollah and Israeli forces that continues to escalate. The US has deployed an enormous amount of firepower to the Middle East in the name of “deterring” regional actors from escalating against Israel, but Amirabdollahian said the US has not threatened to target Iran directly if Hezbollah launched an all-out assault on Israel.
In response to the attacks against US bases, the US has launched three rounds of airstrikes targeting facilities the Pentagon claimed were used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and affiliated groups. Amirabdollahian said “no Iranian forces were struck” in the US airstrikes. He said one of the facilities was previously used by Iranian “military advisers in the fight against terrorists, but that place was empty of any Iranian forces or supplies at the time of the attack.”
Discussing Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups, Amirabdollahian said they “never” asked Iran to enter the war with Israel. Like other Iranian officials, Amirabdollahian maintained Iran was not informed about the October 7 Hamas attack ahead of time, which lines up with US intelligence on the matter.
Sound advice….
There is only one way to stop the war from widening: The UN must reverse its 1947 decision to partition Palestine and the 1948 decision to recognize the illegal Zionist state and deploy a formidable force of peacekeepers composed of Chinese, Turks and Indians (Russia may be too busy finishing off Ukraine) into Palestine to disarm Israel.
Unless this is done, the war will inevitably widen, dragging Iran into it regardless of their wishes.
I recommend everyone listen to Alastair Crooke on Judge Napolitano’s show yesterday and indeed all of his interviews there over the past few weeks:
Alastair Crooke (fmr British Diplomat ): Evaluating Israel’s Moral Justifications
Turkey and China re downright hostile to Israel–yes they will make great,unbiased peacekeepers.
Israel is getting the amount of hostility and vitriol that it deserves for its outstanding record of human rights and Genocide.
A nice dream for you. But that is not going to happen. Israel nation is 75 years old. The best outcome would be for a two state solution. However, Oct 7 has pushed that option off of the table for a while.
There’s already a second state, recognized by 139 of the 193 UN member states. True, that hasn’t proven to be a “solution,” if for no other reason than that when the Israeli regime says it supports a “two-state solution,” it means “as long as we can pretend the second state doesn’t exist.”
More like a “virtual” state. Technically they are considered a non-member observer state by the UN. I’m not sure what that means.
The key word is “state.” It’s a state that is not a full member of the United Nations. Like, for example, Kosovo, Taiwan, Western Sahara — all states, all recognized by this or that number of other states, just not UN members. Only Palestine is recognized by enough other states to have been accorded “observer” status at the UN.
“we don’t want any war to escalate!”
really? every one of yalls are some kind of assholes.
son of bitches assholes
what