Iran on Sunday warned countries against getting involved in its war with the United States and Israel, after President Donald Trump urged world powers to escort oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz chokepoint in the Gulf.
Tehran also sent a stern message to its Arab neighbours, telling them that the Islamic republic has what its foreign minister called “ample evidence” that US bases on their territories were being used to launch attacks.
“This war will end when we are certain that it will not be repeated and that reparations will be paid,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said.
“We experienced this last year: Israel attacked, then the United States,” he said, recalling Israel’s 12-day air war in June last year, which briefly drew in US forces for a night of strikes on Iranian nuclear sites.
Energy prices have soared across the world since Iran responded to the new US-Israeli campaign by threatening shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, which usually sees passage of 20 per cent of global oil and gas exports to the global market.
Trump responded by urging “China, France, Japan, South Korea, the UK and others” to send ships to escort tankers, while the US military continues to pound drone, boat and missile launch sites in Iran on the north shore.
A boy stands near a house that was damaged by a strike, amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Tehran, Iran, on Sunday. – Reuters
ESCALATION
But the countries he listed have given only guarded responses, and Araghchi, in a call with French counterpart Jean-Noel Barrot, warned them to “refrain from any action that could lead to escalation and expansion of the conflict”.
The UK defence ministry was non-committal, saying “we are currently discussing with our allies and partners a range of options to ensure the security of shipping in the region”.
Britain’s minister for energy security, Ed Miliband, said the “plan now has to be to de-escalate the conflict… We are talking to our allies. There are different ways in which we can make maritime shipping possible.”
South Korea said it was monitoring Trump’s remarks on social media, while the policy chief of Japan’s ruling party, Takayuki Kobayashi, said the bar for sending Japanese navy ships to the region under existing laws was “extremely high”.
SEA PASSAGE
Global oil prices have surged by 40 per cent as Iran has choked off the vital sea passage and attacked energy and shipping industry targets in its Gulf neighbours.
The strikes were in retaliation for the US and Israeli air campaign that killed its supreme leader, triggering a war across the Middle East.
As global markets reel, Trump has doubled down, telling NBC News in a weekend interview that he thought Tehran was keen to come to the table but that the US was fighting on to force better terms.
He said he might, again, bomb targets on Iran’s oil hub, Kharg Island, “just for fun”.
“Iran wants to make a deal, and I don’t want to make it because the terms aren’t good enough yet,” Trump said.
Araghchi, in a separate interview with the US network CBS’s “Face the Nation”, denied that Tehran was asking for a deal.
“We are stable and strong enough. We are only defending our people,” Araghchi said. “We don’t see any reason why we should talk with Americans, because we were talking with them when they decided to attack us.”
