US and Europe seek to dissuade Israel from
striking back against Iran
Senior Israeli military chief vows country will
respond to Tehran’s attack
James
Shotter in Jerusalem and Andrew England in London
https://www.ft.com/content/38a1f8d2-404b-46ed-8285-39bcaca5bcb0
The US and
its European allies have stepped up efforts to dissuade Israel from striking
back against Iran, as Israel’s military chief vowed to respond to Tehran’s
unprecedented attack on the country’s territory.
US
secretary of state Antony Blinken and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak both said
western countries were preparing sanctions on Tehran as they sought to prevent
escalation into a full-blown Middle East war.
Blinken
said Washington was “co-ordinating a diplomatic response to seek to prevent
escalation”, while Sunak said the G7 was working on further diplomatic measures
against Iran, which is already heavily sanctioned by the west.
US
President Joe Biden was “certainly not looking for a war with Iran”, John
Kirby, the US National Security Council spokesperson, said on Monday. “We’re
not looking to broaden and deepen this conflict in the region.”
The frantic
diplomacy came as Herzi Halevi, the Israel Defense Forces chief of staff,
signalled that his country was preparing a response to the barrage of more than
300 missiles, rockets and drones fired by Iran on Saturday.
“We are
looking ahead and weighing our [next] steps, and this launch of so many
missiles, cruise missiles, and UAVs into the territory of the State of Israel
will be met with a response,” he said.
Halevi
spoke on Monday after Israel’s five-man war cabinet met for a second day to
discuss its response to Iran’s attack.
He said the
IDF “can handle Iran” and “act forcefully against Iran in places near and far”.
But he also said “we are co-operating with the United States and with strategic
partners in the region”.
An Israeli
official said the war cabinet had discussed a variety of military and
diplomatic responses. In an indication that Israel is considering retaliating
sooner rather than later, the official said any response would have more impact
if it came “in close proximity” to the Iranian attack.
Iranian
foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian told his UK counterpart Lord David
Cameron in a phone call after the attack that Tehran did “not welcome
regional escalation”, the foreign ministry said.
But it said
he also warned that “in case of any new Israeli adventurism, our response will
be urgent, more powerful and larger in scale”.
Ali Bagheri
Kani, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, said on state television that the timing
of Iran’s response to any Israeli retaliatory action “will be measured not in
days or hours, but in seconds”.
The US and
UK have both made clear they will not participate in any retaliatory strike.
French President Emmanuel Macron said the international community should do
“everything we can to avoid flare-ups” and “try to convince Israel that we
shouldn’t respond by escalating, but rather by isolating Iran”.
Tehran
launched the attack on Saturday night in retaliation for an Israeli strike on
its consulate in Damascus this month that killed several senior Iranian
commanders.
An Iranian
official told the Financial Times that Iran had forewarned the US about its
intention to conduct a retaliatory attack against Israel, two days before the
missile and drone barrage was launched.
Messages
were sent to Washington through the Swiss embassy, which acts as the US
representative in Tehran, and later through Turkey, the official said.
“The
message said Iran needed to respond . . . but it would be calculated just to show the
Israelis that, from now on, there will be a response to their actions, but Iran
is not seeking escalation,” the official
added.
The US and
Iran did pass messages to each other but Tehran did not share the timing or the
targets, Kirby said.
International
markets were mixed after the news from the Middle East on Monday, with oil
prices falling slightly from elevated levels, while US stocks slipped on
renewed inflation fears.
Iran’s
salvo was the first time it had attacked Israel directly from its own territory
and brought the Middle East closer to a full-blown war between its two
strongest military powers.
The region
has been engulfed by hostilities since the conflict between Israel and Hamas
erupted in October.
On Monday,
four Israeli soldiers were injured in a blast after entering Lebanese
territory. The Iran-backed Hizbollah militant group said it had planted
explosive devices in the Tel Ismail area and detonated them when the soldiers
approached.
Additional
reporting by Bita Ghaffari in Tehran, Lucy Fisher and Najmeh Bozorgmehr in
London, Max Seddon in Riga and Felicia Schwartz in Washington
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