Lebanese Interim Foreign Minister Abdalla Bou Habib and Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian attend a joint press conference in Beirut, Lebanon, October 13, 2023.Reuters/Mohamed Azakir/File photo Obtaining license rights
DUBAI, Oct 15 (Reuters) – Iran has warned Israel of escalation if it does not stop its aggression against Palestinians, and its foreign minister said other parties in the region were also ready for action, a semi-official news agency said. Fars news agency reported on Sunday.
Hossein Amirabdollahian was quoted as saying, “If the Zionist aggression does not stop, all political parties in the region will be triggered.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that “Hamas has been destroyed” as the military prepares to move into the Gaza Strip to hunt down Islamic extremists whose deadly rampage in Israeli border towns has shocked the world. I vowed to break it.”
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, said on Tuesday that Iran was not involved in the militant Hamas attack on Israel, but praised Israel’s “irreparable” military and intelligence defeat.
Israel has long accused Iranian clerics of supplying weapons to Hamas and inciting violence. The Iranian government said it was providing moral and financial support to the group that controls the Gaza Strip.
Supporting the Palestinian cause has been a pillar of the Islamic Republic since its 1979 revolution and was how the Shiite-majority country established itself as a leader in the Islamic world.
Last week, Ami Abdullahian accused Israel of aiming for “genocide” by enforcing the siege of Gaza, saying an attack on Gaza would “open a new front of resistance” in the Middle East.
“The responsibility for the possible opening of new resistance fronts in the region and the escalation of the war today lies directly with the United States and the Zionist regime (Israel),” Amirabdollahian said.
Iran-backed Hamas said in a statement that Amirabdollahian met with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Qatar on Saturday to discuss the group’s deadly attacks in Israel and discuss the group’s goals. They announced that they had “agreed to continue cooperating” to achieve this goal.
Earlier, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi called on President Emmanuel Macron to ask France to help “prevent repression” of the Palestinians.
Additional reporting by Elwely Elwelly Written by Parisa Hafezi. Edited by: Andrew Cawthorne and Emelia Sithole-Matarise
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