Iran’s reprisals reshape West Asia security structure: Araghchi
Iran’s retaliatory strikes against regional US bases during the 40-day war with the United States and Israel “transformed” the security architecture of West Asia, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in remarks published on Sunday.
“[Countries in] the region could not believe that we would strike across the region and they would not be able to respond. This was a major development that transformed the region’s security structure,” Araghchi said in a lengthy video interview released online under the title ‘The Story of the War.’ The hostilities broke out on February 28 when the United States and Israel launched attacks on Iran, prompting the Islamic Republic to strike back in “two hours” according to the top diplomat by firing barrages of missiles and drones at US military bases in Arab countries that had served as launch points for the offensive, as well as at Israel. US media later reported that the Iranian attacks, which continued for the whole wartime, inflicted significant damage.
Araghchi said Iran’s Armed Forces carried out retaliatory strikes in “the whole region” and spared no country, including Oman, which he described as “a friend of Iran”, because an Omani company supplied fuel to US naval vessels from one of the country’s ports. He said Omani authorities later halted that company’s activities.
“The fact that not even one country in the region could respond shows that the regional security structure can no longer remain as it was before,” Araghchi said, describing the outcome as “a strategic achievement.”
He also said that on the third day of the war he held a telephone conversation with an unnamed Arab foreign minister who threatened an independent military attack on Iran.
Araghchi said he warned that if that country bombed Iran, Iranian forces would strike the country itself rather than only US military bases located there. “The war will begin between us and you,” he quoted himself as saying.
According to Araghchi, Iran kept up strikes against that country until the ceasefire in early April because it continued to allow the United States to use its bases for operations against Iran.
He said the country “never repeated its threat” to attack Iran for the remainder of the war.
Elsewhere in the interview, Araghchi accused the United States of deliberately bombing a primary school in the southern city of Minab on the first day of the conflict, which left 156 people deal, including 120 schoolchildren.
“The enemy’s plan was to dishearten and terrorize the people. They deliberately hit the Minab school, and one of their objectives was to frighten people and show them the full scale of the disaster,” he said. Araghchi added that the United States repeatedly targeted infrastructure during the conflict to test whether Iran would back down and to push the country to the point of surrender. He said those efforts failed to achieve their objective.