Iraq lodges UN complaint over Israel using own airspace to attack Iran
Iraq condemned Israel’s use of its airspace to attack neighboring Iran in a protest letter sent to United Nations chief Antonio Guterres and the UN Security Council, Baghdad said Monday.
A statement from government spokesman Bassim Alawadi said the letter condemns “the Zionist entity’s blatant violation of Iraq’s airspace and sovereignty by using Iraqi airspace to carry out an attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran on October 26.”
Alawadi said the Iraqi Foreign Ministry would also bring up “this violation” in talks with the United States, Israel’s close ally and top arms provider.
Israel on Saturday launched air strikes on military sites in Iran, risking further regional escalation more than a year into the Gaza war and a month into the its war on southern Lebanon.
The Iranian military said that some Israeli aircraft had fired a “small number of long-range missiles... from a distance” inside the US-patrolled airspace of Iraq.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said on Monday that Tehran was “sure that no neighboring country has given this permission to the Zionist regime” to use its airspace.
“We certainly hope that our friends in Iraq will announce the necessary reactions, including by registering their protest with the United Nations, and will not allow such incidents to happen again,” Baghaei added.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Sunday that the US complicity in Israel’s act of aggression against Iran is “quite clear” as it has provided the regime with military equipment and airspace to conduct the raid.
Abbas Araghchi made the remarks on Sunday, a day after US officials claimed that Washington was not directly involved with the Israeli assault that targeted military installations and claimed the lives of four Iranian Army forces.
“The least they (the Americans) did was to provide a space corridor for the Zionist regime, as well as the equipment they already supplied [to Israel] somehow for participation in this operation.”