DUBAI/WASHINGTON/TEHRAN: Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Thursday his country was prepared for any potential ground invasion, saying such a move would spell “disaster” for the Islamic republic’s foes.
“We are waiting for them,” Araghchi told US broadcaster NBC News, as the United States and Israel kept up strikes on Iran. “We are confident that we can confront them and that would be a big disaster for them.”
Araghchi said the Islamic republic was neither asking for a ceasefire nor negotiations with the US, adding that Iran had no plans to close the Strait of Hormuz for now. “We are not asking for a ceasefire. We don´t see any reason why we should negotiate with the US... We negotiated with them twice and every time they attacked us in the middle of negotiations,” Araghchi told NBC News.
Speaking of the strategic Strait of Hormuz, Araghchi said: “We have no intention to close it right now but as the war continues we will consider every scenario.”
He accused Israel of launching a drone attack in Azerbaijan that was blamed on Iran, describing it as an attempt to harm Tehran´s relations with its neighbour. In a phone call with his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov, Araghchi “denied that Iran fired any projectiles” at Azerbaijan. He also condemned “the role of the Israeli regime in such attacks in order to divert public opinion and destroy Iran´s good relations with its neighbours”, according to a statement from Iran´s foreign ministry. Four people were wounded in the midday drone attack in Azerbaijan´s exclave of Nakhichevan near the Iranian border.
However, Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev accused Iran of “terrorism” and threatened retaliation after drone attacks Thursday targeted an airport and a school in an Azerbaijani border region. France´s foreign ministry said the “unjustifiable” attack “constitutes a blatant violation of Azerbaijan´s sovereignty and of international law.” Turkey´s foreign ministry condemned strikes “which target third countries in the region and increase the risk of the war spreading.” Azerbaijan summoned the Iranian envoy in Baku over the incident.
Araghchi accused the United States of committing an atrocity by sinking an Iranian navy ship off Sri Lanka and warned it would “bitterly regret” the precedent set, he posted on X.
In another development, Iranian state television said Iran had struck a US oil tanker in the Gulf with a missile on Thursday. The ship “was hit by a missile in the north of the Persian Gulf” and “is currently on fire”, Iran´s Revolutionary Guards said in a statement reported by state television.
While Iran´s state-run Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs said on Thursday that the death toll from US and Israeli strikes on the Islamic republic has risen to 1,230. AFP was not in a position to verify the toll.
Iran´s ambassador to Saudi Arabia Alireza Enayati said on Thursday his country remained appreciative of Saudi Arabia´s pledge to not allow its airspace or territory to be used during the ongoing war with the US and Israel.
Enayati categorically denied that his country hit the US embassy in Riyadh this week, after Saudi officials said Iran targeted the compound with drones. ”We confirmed that Iran has no role in the attack on the US embassy in Riyadh,” the ambassador told AFP. At least 13 people have been killed in the Gulf, including seven civilians, since Iran began its attacks on Saturday. Enayati, however, denied that Iran was waging a regional war as retaliation for the attacks on his country by the US and Israel.
US President Donald Trump claimed the right to join Iran in deciding its next leader on Thursday as the war escalated further, with US and Israeli jets hitting areas across the country and Gulf cities coming under renewed bombardment.
In an interview with Reuters, Trump said Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei -- a hardliner who has been considered a favourite to suc-ceed his father -- was an unlikely choice. “We want to be involved in the process of choosing the person who is going to lead Iran into the future,” he said by telephone.
Trump also encouraged Iranian Kurdish forces to go on the offensive. “I think it’s wonderful that they want to do that, I’d be all for it,” the president said.
The comments came as the Israeli military warned residents to evacuate areas including eastern Tehran, while Iranian media reported blasts were heard in various parts of the capital.
As Iran responded, warning sirens sounded in Israel, Dubai and Abu Dhabi and fire crews in Bahrain extinguished a blaze at a refinery following a missile strike.
Visiting an air force base in the south of the country, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s achievements so far in Iran had been “great” but that “much work still lies ahead.”
Two sources familiar with Israel’s battle plans said that having killed many Iranian leaders during nearly a week of strikes, Israel was now planning to enter a second phase when it would target underground bunkers where Iran stores its missiles.
Iran´s military said on Thursday that it had launched a drone attack against a US military site in Kuwait, while air raid sirens blared and two blasts were heard in Jerusalem on Thursday, AFP journalists reported. Iran´s army also said it had carried out drone strikes in Israel on Thursday including a radar site. The strikes hit “targets in Tel Aviv as well as Meron radar base” in Israel´s north, the army said as quoted by state TV. Iran´s army also launched a drone attack on a US site in the Iraqi Kurdistan city of Erbil.
While EU and Gulf ministers called following crisis talks Thursday for Iran to immediately end “indiscriminate” attacks across the region in retaliation for US-Israeli at-tacks, warning global security was at stake.
The foreign ministers met by video link as Iran stepped up attacks on countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council—with Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Oman all now targeted.
”The ministers strongly condemned the unjustifiable Iranian attacks against the GCC countries which threaten regional and global security and called on Iran to cease immediately its attacks,” said a joint statement issued afterwards.
Addressing the fallout of “indiscriminate” Iranian attacks, they also “affirmed that the GCC states have the right to take all necessary measures” to defend themselves. They pledged “joint diplomatic efforts” for a lasting solution to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon and for it to “cease production and proliferation” of ballistic missiles and drones.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, who chaired the talks, earlier said the bloc was looking to help Gulf nations fend off Iranian drone strikes, but warned supplies of rel-evant kit might be limited.
Israel´s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich warned Thursday that a southern Beirut suburb, a stronghold of Hezbollah, will face devastation similar to Gaza after the Israeli military told residents to evacuate.
Iran accused Israel and the United States on Thursday of deliberately targeting civilian areas during their war on the Islamic republic, which began six days ago. ”Our people are being brutally slaughtered as the aggressors deliberately target civilian areas and any location they believe will inflict the maximum possible suffering and loss of life,” said foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei in a post on X.
Sri Lanka has offloaded crew of an Iranian navy vessel and assumed control of it, the South Asian nation’s president said Thursday, a day after a deadly US submarine attack on another ship.
President Anura Kumara Dissanayake said in a televised address that his country´s navy had offloaded 208 sailors from the IRIS Bushehr, which had requested port entry due to engine trouble. Fewer commercial flights were cancelled Thursday in the Middle East despite continued military strikes, with more than 100 flights taking off from the United Arab Emirates, according to a specialist data firm. However, no flights left the airports in Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar.
The first two flights bringing home Israelis stranded abroad by the Middle East war landed in Tel Aviv on Thursday, after the airspace was closed as the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran. Each carried 170 passengers.
Britain is sending additional fighter jets to Qatar amid the widening war in the Middle East, Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced Thursday as his defence minister visit-ed Cyprus. The four Typhoon planes will join an existing UK squadron in the Gulf state “to strengthen our defensive operations in Qatar and across the region”, Starmer told reporters.
The son of the last shah toppled in Iran´s 1979 Islamic revolution said Thursday that whoever the clerical government chooses to succeed the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will be illegitimate.
Reza Pahlavi, who has positioned himself as an alternative if the Islamic republic falls, said on social media that “victory is near” after Khamenei was killed last weekend as the United States and Israel launched the war.
Iranian authorities were issuing warnings to people connecting to the internet in defiance of a communications blackout that had left the Islamic republic largely cut off from the outside world, witnesses told AFP on Thursday.
Some Western embassy staff in Riyadh were told to shelter in place, diplomatic sources told AFP on Thursday, with drone debris injuring six people in Abu Dhabi as Iran pressed attacks across the Gulf.
The United Kingdom said on Thursday it was “temporarily” withdrawing some staff and their dependants from its Bahrain embassy.
The Middle East war has forced the World Health Organization to suspend operations at its global emergency logistics hub in Dubai, the agency´s chief said Thursday.
Nato stands by the assertion that a ballistic missile launched from Iran was targeting Turkiye before being shot down, an alliance spokesperson told AFP Thursday, con-tradicting a Turkish official´s claim it was headed for a military base in Cyprus.
Israel issued an unprecedented evacuation warning on Thursday for the entirety of Beirut´s southern suburbs, a stronghold of Hezbollah, sending residents in the district of hundreds of thousands of people fleeing in a panic.
The Lebanese government said on Thursday it would ban any activity by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps—a main backer of the militant group Hezbollah—and seek to deport its members from Lebanon.
US military support jets have been allowed to use a French air base, the French general staff said Thursday, adding it had “full guarantees” they were not involved in Iran strikes.
The announcement came after French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday said US-Israel military operations in Iran were conducted “outside international law”.
Israel’s police and domestic intelligence agency on Thursday issued a warning over attempts by Iranian services to infiltrate and recruit Israelis online.
Iran has not requested military aid from its ally Russia since Israel and the United States began striking the country last week, the Kremlin said Thursday. “In this case, there have been no requests from the Iranian side,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, including AFP, in a daily briefing call. Turkey´s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Thursday that the Middle East war had taken tensions in the region to a “terrifying level” that could spread further.
Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) on Thursday denied claims it sent Kurdish groups to infil-trate Iran, saying it is not involved in any campaign to escalate regional conflicts. KRG spokesperson Peshawa Hawramani called reports suggesting the region is arming and sending Kurdish parties into Iran “completely false.”
China’s government has told the country’s top oil refiners to suspend exports of diesel and gasoline as an escalating conflict in the Persian Gulf disrupts the arrival of crude from one of the world’s largest producing regions, Bloomberg reported.
