Araghchi: Any Israeli attack on Iran to provoke stronger response
FM begins regional tour to denounce Israeli crimes
Iran warned Israel that any attack against its infrastructure will provoke an even stronger response amid threats of Israeli retaliation against Iran’s attack on the occupying regime’s military positions.
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Tuesday that the regime is fully aware of the wide-range of targets inside Israel that are within the reach of Iranian missiles, warning Israel against testing Tehran’s resolve.
Araghchi was speaking at the “Al-Aqsa Flood; The Beginning of Nasrallah” conference in the capital Tehran on Tuesday.
“We tell the Zionist regime not to test Iran’s resolve, as any attack on Iran will be met with an even stronger response than before,” he stressed.
“They have seen the power of our missiles with their own eyes.”
He spoke after Israel claimed it was preparing a response to Iran’s October 1 missile attack on the occupied territories, its second on the entity in six months.
On Friday, US President Joe Biden cautioned Israel against attacking oil installations in Iran, one of the world’s top producers of crude.
On October 1, Iran launched hundreds of ballistic missiles towards the Israeli entity’s military, espionage and intelligence bases all over the occupied territories, inflicting damage on them.
The operation – dubbed Operation True Promise II – came in response to the regime’s assassinations of Hamas’ chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, Hezbollah’s leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, and IRGC commander Abbas Nilforoushan, an Iranian military advisory in Lebanon, in Beirut.
Regional tour
The Iranian top diplomat, who has just returned from his tour of Lebanon and Syria, said he will visit Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region starting on Tuesday to discuss regional issues and work on stopping Israel’s crimes in Gaza and Lebanon.
“Our dialogue continues with regards to the developments in the region to prevent the shameless crimes of the Zionist regime in Lebanon in continuation of its crimes in Gaza,” Araghchi said.
“Starting today, I’ll start a trip to the region, to Riyadh and other capitals in the region and we will strive to have a collective movement from the countries of the region... to stop the brutal attacks in Lebanon,” Araghchi added.
Nearly 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip as a result of the Israeli onslaught since the beginning of its devastating war on the Palestinian territory in October 2023. The Gaza Health Ministry says more than 16,000 of those deaths were children.
Alongside the fatalities, nearly 60% of buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed since the beginning of the war.
Nearly two million Palestinians have been displaced by Israel’s occupation army and face a grave humanitarian crisis.
Israel launched the war on Gaza after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas waged the surprise Operation al-Aqsa Storm against Israel in response to the regime’s decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.
Israel has also since then been targeting Lebanon. Since late last month, the regime has escalated its strikes on Lebanon, killing more than 2,000 people in the Arab country.