World leaders urge calm after Israeli drone
strike on Iran ratchets up tension
Tit-for-tat attacks have breached taboo of direct
strikes on each other’s territory but Tehran has no ‘immediate’ plans to
retaliate
Julian
Borger in Washington and Peter Beaumont in Jerusalem
Fri 19 Apr
2024 18.49 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/19/israel-iran-drone-strike-reaction
World
leaders urged calm on Friday after Israel conducted a pre-dawn drone sortie
over Iran following a cycle of tit-for-tat attacks that crossed an important
red line that has for decades held the Middle East back from a major regional
conflict.
There were
tentative hopes late on Friday that the apparent strike attempt against an
airbase near the city of Isfahan was sufficiently limited to fend off the
threat of a bigger Iranian response and an uncontrolled spiral of violence
between a nuclear power and a state with the capacity to develop nuclear
weapons quickly.
According
to Italy’s foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, speaking later on Friday, the US
told the G7 foreign ministers meeting in Capri that it had received
“last-minute” information from Israel about a drone action in Iran. Israel’s
N12 news channel reported that Israel had also struck targets in Iraq and
Syria, and explosions were reported in both those countries.
Iran’s
foreign minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, said the sortie on Isfahan involved
miniature drones and had caused no damage or casualties.
“The
Zionist regime’s media supporters, in a desperate effort, tried to make victory
out of their defeat, while the downed mini-drones have not caused any damage or
casualties,” Amirabdollahian told envoys of Muslim nations during a visit to
the UN in New York, according to Iranian media. Tehran has indicated that it
had no “immediate” plan for retaliation.
“We’re
committed to Israel’s security,” the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken,
said at the G7 meeting. “We’re also committed to de-escalating.”
Blinken
added that despite the confrontation, the US remained “intensely focused on
Gaza”, where at least 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s war
against Hamas and well over a million people have been forced to flee their
homes.
The G7 and
the European Commission both made calls for the simmering conflict to be
defused. The UN secretary general, António Guterres, in his own intervention,
said it was “high time to stop the dangerous cycle of retaliation in the Middle
East”.
US and
European officials were concerned that the breaking of the taboo on direct
attacks between the two powers had left the region in a far more precarious
position in the coming months and years, as Israel plans to continue its
relentless campaign in Gaza, deepening the humanitarian disaster there, and
openly weighing a war in Lebanon with Hezbollah, a close Iranian ally.
The Tehran
government appeared to shrug off the Friday morning incident near an airbase
near the city of Isfahan where it said air defences had brought down three
drones, which had been launched inside Iran. A few hours earlier, the foreign
ministry had warned that any new Israeli attack would be met with a “maximal”
and “decisive” response, but the lengths state media went to minimise the
incursion appeared designed to leave the option of not responding.
US
officials confirmed that Israel had conducted military operations against Iran
and had given Washington a few hours’ notice, but did not give any details of
those operations. It remained unclear on Friday night whether only drones had
been involved, whether any munitions had actually hit their targets, or had
been intercepted, and where the sortie had been launched from.
Reuters
quoted a source familiar with western intelligence assessments as agreeing with
the initial Iranian claim that the drones had taken off inside Iranian
territory, suggesting either special forces or an Iranian faction allied to
Israel was involved. Previous attacks inside Iran have been attributed to
Israel, including a drone strike also on a weapons factory in Isfahan in
January 2023.
Joe Biden’s
administration had sought to defuse a brewing conflict which had begun with the
Israeli bombing of a Iranian consular building in Damascus, killing a top
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) general and six other officers, for
which Iran retaliated on Sunday morning by launching about 300 missiles and
drones at Israel, almost all of which were intercepted.
According
to a Reuters account, Biden was successful in persuading members of Israel’s
security cabinet from striking back at Iranian territory on Monday night.
Ministers Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, both former armed forces commanders,
were reportedly pressing for a forceful and quick response but agreed to hold
off following a conversation with Biden, and in the face of differing views
from other ministers, Reuters reported, citing two Israeli officials. Planned
operations against Iran were postponed twice according to that account.
US
officials said that they had been informed by their Israeli counterparts soon
after Sunday’s missile and drone attack by Iran, that some form of Israeli
counter-strike was inevitable, but the Israelis assured Washington that their
response would be “smart” and would not target Iran’s nuclear sites.
The
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed on Friday there had been no
damage to Iran’s nuclear facilities. The agency said on the X social media
platform that it was continuing to monitor the situation closely and called for
maximum restraint from all sides, stressing that “nuclear facilities should
never be a target in military conflicts”.
Friday
morning’s strike, whatever its scale, was an act of defiance of US influence.
Netanyahu, in particular, has long been a hawk on Iran, having threatened
Israeli strikes on the country in the past, and has been under pressure from
far-right coalition partners to mount a robust response.
With the
scale of the retaliation so far extremely limited, the far-right Israeli
national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, condemned the response on X as
“Feeble!”
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