Iran will respond in kind to any possible Israeli attack while actively seeking diplomatic solutions for peace and justice, President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Tuesday.
During a visit to the Hamas office in Teheran, Pezeshkian criticized Western support for Israeli attacks, assassinations and displacement of people in Palestine and Lebanon.
“The US and European countries defend these crimes by arming Israel. Where are the awakened consciences that claim to defend the rights of women, children and humans?” Pezeshkian was quoted by Mehr News Agency as saying. “Only by establishing justice and human rights for all can this war be ended.”
Israeli cabinet ministers have been informed that a planned counterattack against Iran will take place “very soon”, state-owned Kan TV reported on Monday.
In a letter to the United Nations Security Council on Monday, Amir Saeid Iravani, Iran’s permanent representative to the UN, said, “The United States will bear full responsibility for its role in instigating, inciting and enabling any acts of aggression by Israel against the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
Iravani sent the letter following US President Joe Biden’s indication on Friday that he was aware of Israeli plans to act against Iran, IRNA reported.
“This inflammatory statement is deeply concerning, as it indicates the United States’ tacit approval and explicit support for Israel’s unlawful military aggression against Iran,” Iravani’s letter said. “Such statements also contradict the repeated claims of the United States that it supports de-escalation in the region.”
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who has been on diplomatic tours to regional countries for weeks, told Turkish TV channel NTV that Teheran will respond proportionately to any Israeli attack on Iranian soil.
“We have identified all the targets in Israel, and it will receive a proportionate response to any attack against Iran,” he said.
In response to Biden’s comments, Araghchi said on X on Saturday: “Anybody with knowledge or understanding of ‘how and when Israel was going to attack Iran’, and/or providing the means and backing for such folly, should logically be held accountable for any possible causality.”
In addition, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said an advanced THAAD missile defense battery is now “in place” in Israel, accompanied by about 100 US troops who are already stationed there with the system.
Peter Henning, an activist in Tasmania, Australia, wrote on the Pearls & Irritations website that the presence of US forces in Israel demolishes international law.
“Clearly, this development is the beginning of direct and open involvement of US troops on the ground in Israel in preparation for the Israeli escalation of conflict with Iran,” Henning wrote.
“It signals that the oft-repeated media statements by Joe Biden and other US officials that they don’t support Israeli escalation to war with Iran have always been misleading, as all their other ‘opposition’ to Israeli escalations in Gaza (such as Rafah being a “red line”), the West Bank and now Lebanon, have been.”
On Monday, Esmaeil Baghaei, spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, said Iran has stepped up diplomatic efforts in recent weeks to prevent more bloodshed by Israel in Gaza and Lebanon and the spillover of conflict to other parts of the region, IRNA reported.
Xinhua contributed to this story.
