United Nations.- Iran’s president accused Israel yesterday of seeking a wider war in the Middle East and of setting “traps” to draw his country into a bigger conflict.
Masoud Pezeshkian told about two dozen media representatives that Iran does not want the ongoing war in Gaza or airstrikes on the Israel-Lebanon border to be extended.
He said that although Israel insists it does not want a wider war, it is taking steps that prove otherwise.
Pezeshkian cited deadly explosions of pagers, walkie-talkies and other electronic devices in Lebanon last week, which he blamed on Israel, and the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on the eve of his inauguration.
“We are being dragged to a point where we do not want to go,” the Iranian leader said, referring to Israel. “In war there are no winners. We are only fooling ourselves” if we believe that.
Asked when Iran would respond to Haniyeh’s killing, he said: “We will give our response at the right time and place.”
Pezeshkian said Iran’s drone and missile attacks on Israel in April, in response to an attack on an Iranian consular building in Syria’s capital that Tehran blamed on Israel, demonstrated its defensive capabilities.
He insisted that Iran will not supply Russia with ballistic missiles to attack Ukraine.
“We have never approved Russia’s aggression against Ukraine,” he said.
Pezeshkian added that the two countries should establish a dialogue.
He was asked about Iran’s nuclear program following the Trump administration’s withdrawal from its 2015 nuclear deal with the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany, which has seen Tehran expand its uranium enrichment from 3.67% to 60% purity, making many Western countries nervous that it is seeking to build a nuclear weapon.
Will Iran return to low-enriched uranium and give up its stockpiles of highly enriched uranium if the nuclear deal is restored?
The Iranian president reiterated that weapons of mass destruction have no place in Iran or its military structures.
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