{"id":285873,"date":"2024-04-18T06:30:27","date_gmt":"2024-04-18T06:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=285873"},"modified":"2024-04-20T05:50:18","modified_gmt":"2024-04-20T05:50:18","slug":"netanyahu-aims-to-trap-west-into-war-across-middle-east-says-iranian-diplomat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=285873","title":{"rendered":"Netanyahu aims to trap west into war across Middle East, says Iranian diplomat"},"content":{"rendered":"

Patrick Wintour \u2013 The Guardian Apr 16, 2024<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking to trap the west into a total war across the Middle East that would have incalculable consequences for the region and the world, Iran\u2019s top diplomat in the UK has claimed, in his first interview since Tehran launched an unprecedented missile and drone attack against Israel at the weekend.<\/p>\n

Seyed Mehdi Hosseini Matin also warned that if Israel made \u201canother mistake\u201d by launching an attack on Iran, there would be a response from Iran that was stronger, more severe, and administered without a warning like that issued before the weekend attack<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The salvo of more than 300 drones and missiles \u2013 almost all of which were intercepted by Israel and its allies or fell short of their targets \u2013 came in retaliation for a 1 April airstrike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus<\/a>, Syria, that killed several Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards officers. Israel\u2019s top general, Lt Gen Herzi Halevi, has said the country would respond<\/a>, but it remains unclear what form that would take.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe response to the next mistake of the Zionist will not take 12 days\u2019 time. It will be decided as soon as we see what the hostile regime has done. It will be immediate, and without warning. It will be stronger and more severe,\u201d said Matin, Iran\u2019s charg\u00e9 d\u2019affaires in London. He ruled out Iran attacking civilian centres or building a nuclear weapon, even though he said Iran knew Israel<\/a> was an undeclared nuclear state.<\/p>\n

Both the US and EU have signalled further sanctions<\/a> against Iran over its attack on Israel, while western leaders have also urged Israel to exercise restraint against escalation. The UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, said it was a \u201cmoment for calm heads to prevail\u201d in a call with Netanyahu, Israel\u2019s prime minister, on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Matin, who has been Iran\u2019s senior diplomat in the UK since February 2022 when the ambassador was recalled, denied that Iran had made a strategic mistake by attacking Israel\u2019s military bases, so shifting attention from Gaza<\/a> to the wider regional conflict in which Iran\u2019s long-term role came into question.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a good opportunity for western countries to demonstrate that they are rational actors, and they are not going to be entrapped by Netanyahu and his goal, which is to be in power for as long as he could actually stay in power,\u201d he claimed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIran has considered its actions very carefully, and understood that there is a trap, but not for Iran<\/a>, 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Matin insisted that before the attack on Israel, Iran had urged western officials \u2013 including the British foreign secretary, David Cameron<\/a> \u2013 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 ceasefire in Gaza, he said.<\/p>\n

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. \u201cAs Cameron mentioned<\/a>, rightly, every nation has the right to defend itself against this kind of flagrant breach of diplomatic and international law.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also denied Cameron\u2019s 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 defence 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIranian forces didn\u2019t target any populated sites so as to prevent human casualties, nor did it attack government buildings and centres. It was a legitimate defence operation that was conducted in a way that gave considerable warning,\u201d he said. \u201cNow, I can say that the mission is accomplished. And that\u2019s it. That\u2019s what we have announced very publicly, that that mission is concluded.\u201d<\/p>\n

Matin portrayed the attack as a show of force \u2013 \u201cdisplaying military capabilities, missiles, and drones more powerful than what all the international community expected from Iran\u201d \u2013 as he claimed it had been necessary to demonstrate deterrence so no other country would dare to take action threatening its security. \u201cNobody can, at the moment, imagine that Iran is Iran of the Iran-Iraq war. Iran is now a regional superpower,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He also insisted that Iran had withstood sanctions before, and if the west imposed further sanctions, it would not change course, as since the beginning of the revolution in 1979 Iran had resolved to act independently.<\/p>\n

Asked about the condemnation of Iran in the British parliament, he said the call to proscribe the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps<\/a> was coming only from rightwing Conservatives, but if ever enforced would lead to reprisals, since the IRGC was part of the Iranian state.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think that it is better to hear the voice of the British people during the last six months demanding a ceasefire and ending the killing of innocent Palestinian people in Gaza,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Iran\u2019s charg\u00e9 d\u2019affaires in London said his country would respond more severely if Israel attacked it again. If that happens, and depending on the scale of the Israeli attack, we can expect a further escalation with ultimately Britain, the U.S. and France and Germany fighting on Israel\u2019s behalf <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":274315,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-285873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Commentary","category-Israel_Anti-Semitism_Zionism_and_US-UK_allies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=285873"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":285878,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285873\/revisions\/285878"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/274315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=285873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=285873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=285873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}