IRAN’S armed forces have warned they will answer ‘dangerous’ Israeli aircraft movements over neighbouring countries, while the Foreign Ministry condemned a fresh US-Gulf statement as meddlesome.
The Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, the central command of the country’s armed forces, said in a statement: ‘We consider the movements and presence of military aircraft of the terrorist Zionist regime in the skies of some neighbouring countries towards Iran to be a dangerous act and a threat against the Islamic Republic of Iran.’
It added: ‘If America is unable to contain and control the Zionist regime, the Islamic Republic of Iran will not tolerate any threat against it and considers it its right to respond to these dangerous actions.’
Tehran has also pressed Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government over anti-Iran groups in northern Iraq, reportedly giving the federal government and Erbil a choice between extraditing the groups’ leaders to face terrorism proceedings in Iran or moving them to a third country.
Iranian forces have struck repeatedly in recent months, including an 8 June operation in Sulaymaniyah, and have warned of wider attacks if separatists are allowed to cross the border.
The diplomatic front opened the same day, with the Foreign Ministry denouncing a joint US-Gulf Cooperation Council statement of 25 June as ‘meddlesome, irresponsible, and provocative’ and dismissing Washington’s talk of an ‘enduring US commitment’ to Gulf security as ‘rhetoric and an inversion of reality’.
Tehran pointed to the US-Israeli aggression of 28 February to 8 April, when, it said, Gulf states let their soil and airspace be used for attacks that opened with strikes assassinating senior Iranian officials.
The ministry urged the council ‘to prevent any use of their territory and facilities by third parties to plan, organise, support, and execute illegal actions, including military aggression against the Islamic Republic of Iran.’
It voiced ‘loathing at the repetition of the big lie’ pushed by the US and the ‘genocidal Zionist regime’ over Iran’s peaceful nuclear programme, and rejected the council’s branding of Palestinian and Lebanese resistance groups as ‘Iranian proxies’, countering that ‘the only proxy entity in the region is the Zionist regime’.
Resistance to occupation and apartheid, it said, is legitimate under international law.
On the Strait of Hormuz, the ministry blamed recent maritime insecurity on the US, Israel and the states that aided their campaign, restating that the waterway lies within the territorial waters of Iran and Oman and will be managed under Article 5 of the 18 June Memorandum of Understanding that ended the war.
