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Iranian envoy to UK: Netanyahu aims to trap West into Middle East conflicts
Seyed Mehdi Hosseini Matin argued that the West was losing credibility in the Middle East in a way that would ultimately lead to the US leaving the region, and a peace being reached by regional powers alone, The Guardian reported.
“Iran has considered its actions very carefully, and understood that there is a trap, but not for Iran, for the Western countries and allied countries in which they are drawn by the Zionist state into a total war inside the Middle East, and the whole world soon may be unable to control the consequences.”
Matin insisted that before the attack on Israel, Iran had urged Western officials – including the British foreign secretary, David Cameron – to back a UN security council statement condemning Israel for attacking the Iranian consulate in Damascus. It had also urged the West to back an immediate cease-fire in Gaza, he said.
Matin said Cameron had last week refused the Iranian request, even though this week he had admitted that the UK would have responded very strongly if a hostile power flattened a British consulate. “As Cameron mentioned, rightly, every nation has the right to defend itself against this kind of flagrant breach of diplomatic and international law.”
He also denied Cameron’s claims that there could have been thousands of civilian casualties if the mass attack of Iranian drones and missiles, which decisively moved its years-long shadow war with Israel into the open, had penetrated the defense of Israel and its allies. He said he found such an accusation extraordinary coming from a government that had armed a regime that had killed 34,000 Palestinians.
He said that Iranian forces didn’t target any populated sites so as to prevent human casualties.