Iran’s Raisi warns Israel against any hostile action

Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi warned

on Monday that the armed forces would not let arch-foe Israel rest if it took
action targeting the Islamic republic.

“You must know that if you try to take any action against the Iranian
nation… our armed forces will not leave you in peace,” Raisi said, during a
military parade to mark National Army Day.

His comments come days after he warned neighbouring Iraq against using its
territory for activities that disrupt Iran’s security.

Last month, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, the military’s ideological arm,
said it fired a dozen ballistic missiles at a “strategic” site in Arbil, the
capital of Iraq’s autonomous northern Kurdistan region, claiming they were
being used by Israel.

However, Arbil governor Oumid Khouchnaw dismissed as “baseless” the
presence of Israeli sites in and around the city.

“There are no Israeli sites in the region,” he said at the time.

Also last month, Israel hosted talks attended by top Arab diplomats and US
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, saying the meeting would send a strong
message to Tehran.

“This new architecture, the shared capabilities we are building,
intimidates and deters our common enemies — first and foremost Iran and its
proxies,” Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said at the end of the meeting
in southern Israel.

The meeting came as world powers have been negotiating a way to revive a
2015 nuclear deal with Iran, to rein in its nuclear activities in exchange
for sanctions relief.

Israel is adamantly opposed to the original deal and any effort to restore
it.

The accord started to unravel in 2018 when then US president Donald Trump
left the deal and re-instated sanctions, leading Iran to in turn step up its
nuclear programme again.

On Thursday, the UN atomic energy watchdog said Iran has started to make
components for machines used to enrich uranium at a new workshop in Natanz,
the country’s main nuclear site.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the new workshop
replaces a nuclear facility in Karaj, near Tehran, after an attack there last
year, which Iran said was an act of sabotage carried out by Israel.

AFP