Iran warns US over support for Israel
Iran’s foreign minister warned that new fronts would open against the US if it keeps up unequivocal support for Israel, escalating a rhetorical back-and-forth that has stoked fears the Israeli conflict with Hamas will spread into a wider regional war, Bloomberg reported.
Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian declined to detail the consequences Iran might have in store. He denied that Iran had instructed groups in Syria and Iraq to target US forces in recent days, and said it was Washington — not Tehran — that was fanning the violence in the days since Hamas militants killed some 1,400 people in an attack on Israel and Israeli forces responded with punishing airstrikes.
“The US is advising others to show self-restraint, but it has sided with Israel totally," Amirabdollahian said in an interview with Bloomberg Television from Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York. “If the United States continues what it has been doing so far, then new fronts will be opened up against the United States."
“I would like to warn right here that the continuation of the situation, the continuation of the killing of the people in Gaza — women and children — will make the situation get out of control in the region," he said. “The American side should decide — does it really want to escalate, intensify the war?"
Amirabdollahian spoke less than a day after the US said that it had conducted military strikes on two Syrian facilities linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that had been used for attacks against US troops in the region. US officials have said they don’t have evidence that Iran explicitly ordered those attacks but they hold Iran responsible because it supports groups that carried them out.