Israel Already at War with Iran Says Iranian Diplomat

Oct. 2, 2021 (EIRNS)—Israel and Iran are already at war, according to Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh yesterday. “The war with Israel has already started,” he told Ma’ariv, reported the Jerusalem Post. “Israel has carried out attacks that were intended to destroy our nuclear program for peaceful purposes. It murdered nuclear scientists and harmed the Iranian people. Iran is accused of terrorism, but there is no good or bad terrorist. The whole crisis in the region is Israel’s fault.” Khatibzadeh later said that Israel had “done everything” to thwart the nuclear talks in Vienna and to cause conflict between Iran and the world powers. He accused the United States of “soft terrorism” by holding up medicine and starving the people of his country.

Asked if he thought a return to the nuclear deal would prevent a military operation by Israel, Khatibzadeh replied: “Israel has severely damaged our research and civilian system. There is talk of an Iranian nuclear threat, but Israel has hundreds of bombs, and it has never signed the [Nuclear] Non-Proliferation Treaty.”

However, Khatibzadeh, who spoke at the World Peace Forum, said that “the region is tired of wars. We must find a new approach to solving the problems according to UN resolutions. All parties must show political will for an arrangement.”

The Israelis, meanwhile, not only issue threats, they also issue photo ops. Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid was in Bahrain yesterday for the opening of the new Israeli embassy in Manama. While in town, he and his Bahraini Foreign Minister Abdullatif bin Rashid al Zayani, along with their entourages, took a detour across town to the U.S. naval base, home of the headquarters of the U.S. Fifth fleet, where they were ostentatiously photographed, along with Fifth Fleet commander Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, aboard the USS Pearl Harbor, a hulking, 16,000 ton (full load) amphibious assault ship. All three made statements but, as the Times of Israel reported, the statements were beside the point. “It was the visual that mattered: representatives of the three countries with the most adversarial relationship with Iran standing together beneath a clear symbol of U.S. military might on the coast of the Persian Gulf,” Times of Israel reported. “The message was stark: The U.S. backs Israel’s burgeoning ties with Gulf states; Washington is determined to protect civilian shipping against attacks by Iran and its proxies; any who believe the American withdrawal from Afghanistan means the U.S. is washing its hands of the region are mistaken.”