‘Iran does not seek spread of Israel’s war on Gaza, but US approach makes it possible’

Iran says it does not want further spread of Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, but the approach taken by the United States and the Israeli regime in the region makes the expansion of the war quite possible.

Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian made the remarks in an interview with Financial Times during his recent trip to Geneva, Switzerland.

The Israeli regime launched its devastating war on the blockaded territory on October 7 following a surprise operation by Gaza-based resistance movements. At least 12,300 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 5,000 children, and over 29,800 people sustained injuries so far during the war.

The United States, Israel’s biggest and oldest ally, has provided the regime with thousands of arms consignments since the initiation of the war.

Washington, which has been trying to justify the Tel Aviv regime’s ferocious attacks on Gaza as a means of “self-defense,” has been also casting its veto against the United Nations Security Council resolutions that called on the occupying regime to cease its aggression.

In his interview, Iran’s top diplomat noted that during the early weeks and days of the war, American officials sent messages to Iran through certain diplomatic channels, claiming that Washington was not after expansion of the scope of the war and asking Iran to exercise self-restraint.

“Over the past 40 days, messages have been exchanged between Iran and the US via the US interests section at the Swiss embassy in Tehran,” Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said.

“In response to the US, we said that Iran does not want the war to spread, but due to the approach adopted by the US and Israel in the region, if the [Israeli] war crimes against the people of Gaza and the West Bank are not stopped, any possibility could be considered, and a wider conflict could prove inevitable,” Iran’s foreign minister said.

Amir-Abdollahian added that the US has sent similar messages to Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement as well, asking the movement to show self-restraint.

Iran’s foreign minister said despite those messages, the US has offered its full support to Israel and supplied the regime with all kinds of military equipment and weapons, which has led to escalation of the war.

He emphasized that Washington’s unbridled support for Tel Aviv proves that the US is not committed to its claim of being against further spread of the Gaza war.

Elsewhere in the interview, Amir-Abdollahian said from his vantage point, “expansion of the scope of the war in the region has already started.”

“The fact that the Yemeni army issues official statements and attacks the occupied territories with missiles and drones means the war has begun to expand, or the fact that Hezbollah is fighting with a third of the Israeli army shows the war has expanded,” Iran’s foreign minister said.

He added that Palestinian resistance groups have never asked Iran to enter into the war, because “they have everything, and they produce missiles and drones themselves.”