Al Jazeera reported on Thursday that Iran has delivered a message to the US, saying it doesn’t want a regional war but warning that its “unilateral self-restraint” is over.
The message, delivered through Qatari meditators, said that “individual self-restraint” does not secure Iran’s “national security requirements.”
Iran also warned that if Israel launched an attack on Iran, it would be met with an “unconventional” response that would include the targeting of Israeli infrastructure.
The message comes as Israel is vowing to respond to the Iranian missile barrage that was launched on Tuesday, which was a response to the Israeli killings of Hamas’s political chief in Tehran, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, and a senior member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) who was killed alongside Nasrallah.
Hamas’s political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed back on July 31 when he was at a heavily guarded guest house in Tehran, where he was visiting for the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.
Pezeshkian said last month that Iran waited to respond to the Haniyeh killing because of US warnings that it could interrupt Gaza ceasefire talks. “They told us earlier to prevent a larger war to wait another week or so for peace to be obtained,” he said. “Clearly the politicians that lie to us these days … lie to you as well.”
Now, Iran is making it clear that it will respond right away to any Israeli attack on its oil as the US and Israel are discussing options for potential retaliation. President Biden said Thursday that the idea of hitting Iran’s nuclear sites is being discussed.
