Middle East crisis live: Senior figures in Iran warn of stronger response if Israel retaliates

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Senior figures in Iran continue to warn Israel against retaliation

A senior spokesperson for Iran’s military has warned the US, UK, France and Germany to stop supporting Israel, and said that there will be an even stronger response from Iran if Israel retaliates to the strikes at the weekend.

The official state news agency IRNA reports that Brig Gen Abolfazl Shekarchi said:

We remind the heads of state of the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany to stop supporting the declining child-killing terrorist regime of Israel. The Islamic Republic of Iran has proven that it is not a warmonger and does not seek to spread the war. The response will be stronger if the regime carries out more severe aggressive act.

Overnight a senior official briefed Al Jazeera that Iran had a broad range of options to use against Israel, and said that “its bullying and madly taken behavior towards Iran will not work.”

A diplomatic read-out of a call between Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi and Qatar’s emir said that the Iranian leader had said “We now categorically declare that the smallest action against Iranian interests will certainly be met with a severe, widespread and painful response against all its perpetrators.”

Al Jazeera also reports that on state TV in Iran, deputy foreign minister Ali Bagheri Kani said that his country would not wait 12 days to respond to another Israeli attack, but would retaliate in “a matter of seconds.”

Iran launched over 300 strikes against Israel at the weekend in response, it said, to the destruction of its consulate in Damascus on 1 April, which it blames on Israel. The vast majority of the launches failed to reach their targets or were taken down by Israel’s air defence, aided by a coalition of partners including the UK and France.

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A senior spokesperson for Iran’s military has warned the US, UK, France and Germany to stop supporting Israel, and said that there will be an even stronger response from Iran if Israel retaliates to the strikes at the weekend.

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The official state news agency IRNA reports that Brig Gen Abolfazl Shekarchi said:

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We remind the heads of state of the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany to stop supporting the declining child-killing terrorist regime of Israel. The Islamic Republic of Iran has proven that it is not a warmonger and does not seek to spread the war. The response will be stronger if the regime carries out more severe aggressive act.

\n

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Overnight a senior official briefed Al Jazeera that Iran had a broad range of options to use against Israel, and said that “its bullying and madly taken behavior towards Iran will not work.”

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A diplomatic read-out of a call between Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi and Qatar’s emir said that the Iranian leader had said “We now categorically declare that the smallest action against Iranian interests will certainly be met with a severe, widespread and painful response against all its perpetrators.”

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Al Jazeera also reports that on state TV in Iran, deputy foreign minister Ali Bagheri Kani said that his country would not wait 12 days to respond to another Israeli attack, but would retaliate in “a matter of seconds.”

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Iran launched over 300 strikes against Israel at the weekend in response, it said, to the destruction of its consulate in Damascus on 1 April, which it blames on Israel. The vast majority of the launches failed to reach their targets or were taken down by Israel’s air defence, aided by a coalition of partners including the UK and France.

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In the UK, junior government minister Laura Farris has said there is some value in continuing to talk to the government in Iran when asked about the prospect of the UK proscribing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation.

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The minister for victims and safeguarding told viewers of Sky News:

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No one is denying that they are a malign force. We have repeatedly sanctioned both individual commanders and the IRGC more generally, so that puts very severe restrictions on their ability to move. And we’re not suggesting that they’re not a problem.

\n

[But] one of the things [foreign secretary David Cameron] has been saying more widely is at the moment we have a direct diplomatic channel, a direct line of communication to Tehran. Even though relations are difficult, and those conversations are not always easy, there is actually something positive about being able to have face-to-face diplomatic relations.

\n

This is a unique moment of tension in the Middle East and for the wider region. Everything is focused on cool heads, avoiding escalation.

\n

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The UN nuclear watchdog chief has said he is concerned about Israel possibly targeting Iranian nuclear facilities, in retaliation for the weekends attacks on its territory.

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Israel’s military chief said on Monday his country would respond to the missile and drone attack by Iran, launched in retaliation for a suspected Israeli airstrike on its embassy compound in Damascus on 1 April.

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IAEA director general, Rafael Grossi, said Iran closed its nuclear facilities on Sunday over “security considerations” and that while they reopened on Monday, he kept IAEA inspectors away “until we see that the situation is completely calm.”

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When asked about the possibility of an Israel strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, Grossi said: “We are always concerned about this possibility.” He urged “extreme restraint.”

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Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s continuing coverage of the Middle East crisis. Here are the headlines …

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    \n

  • The UN nuclear watchdog chief has said he is concerned about Israel possibly targeting Iranian nuclear facilities, in retaliation for the weekends attacks on its territory.

  • \n

  • Israel will respond to Iran’s weekend missile and drone attack on its territory, the IDF’s chief of staff said on Monday. “This launch of so many missiles, cruise missiles, and drones into Israeli territory will be met with a response,” chief of staff Herzi Halevi said, speaking from the Nevatim air force base in southern Israel, which sustained some damage in the attack.

  • \n

  • Iran does not want increased tensions but will respond immediately and more strongly than before if Israel retaliates, Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian told his British counterpart on Monday, according to Iranian state media.

  • \n

  • Israeli settlers killed two Palestinians on Monday in the occupied West Bank province of Nablus, Salah Bani Jaber, the mayor of Aqraba, told Reuters.

  • \n

  • Israel has moved in a “significant way” but Hamas is the barrier to a deal that would see fighting in Gaza paused and hostages released, state department spokesperson Matthew Miller said. Hamas rejected the latest proposed deal and has said any new hostage deal must bring about an end to the Gaza war and withdrawal of all Israeli forces, Reuters reports.

  • \n

  • A UN report said that Israel has destroyed over 3,000 buildings within a 1km “buffer zone” that it is creating inside the Gaza Strip along the territory’s border with Israel.

  • \n

  • Emmanuel Macron has said that France will do everything to avoid an escalation in the Middle East. He told the BFMTV news channel “We need to be by Israel’s side to ensure its protection to the maximum, but also to call for a limit to avoid an escalation.”

  • \n

  • The Netherlands said it will reopen its embassy in Tehran on Tuesday after closing it for two days for safety reasons. It added in the statement that it does not exclude a new closure of its embassy.

  • \n

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It is Martin Belam with you here today for the next few hours, and you can reach me at martin.belam@theguardian.com

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Key events

Palestinian news agency Wafa reports that there have been Israeli military raids in the occupied West Bank in the town of Arraba, south of Jenin, and in the Balata camp, east of Nablus. Israel has occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 1967.

Senior figures in Iran continue to warn Israel against retaliation

A senior spokesperson for Iran’s military has warned the US, UK, France and Germany to stop supporting Israel, and said that there will be an even stronger response from Iran if Israel retaliates to the strikes at the weekend.

The official state news agency IRNA reports that Brig Gen Abolfazl Shekarchi said:

We remind the heads of state of the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany to stop supporting the declining child-killing terrorist regime of Israel. The Islamic Republic of Iran has proven that it is not a warmonger and does not seek to spread the war. The response will be stronger if the regime carries out more severe aggressive act.

Overnight a senior official briefed Al Jazeera that Iran had a broad range of options to use against Israel, and said that “its bullying and madly taken behavior towards Iran will not work.”

A diplomatic read-out of a call between Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi and Qatar’s emir said that the Iranian leader had said “We now categorically declare that the smallest action against Iranian interests will certainly be met with a severe, widespread and painful response against all its perpetrators.”

Al Jazeera also reports that on state TV in Iran, deputy foreign minister Ali Bagheri Kani said that his country would not wait 12 days to respond to another Israeli attack, but would retaliate in “a matter of seconds.”

Iran launched over 300 strikes against Israel at the weekend in response, it said, to the destruction of its consulate in Damascus on 1 April, which it blames on Israel. The vast majority of the launches failed to reach their targets or were taken down by Israel’s air defence, aided by a coalition of partners including the UK and France.

We reported earlier the comments from IAEA chief Rafael Grossi about his concerns that Israel might mount an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Grossi said that even when the sites reopen, inspectors will stay away for at least a day “until we see that the situation is completely calm”.

News agency AFP have made a list of previous times that Israel is believed to have attacked nuclear facilities belonging to other states in the region.

In 1981, it bombed the Osirak nuclear reactor in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. And in 2018, it admitted to having launched a top-secret air raid against a reactor in Syria 11 years prior.

In 2010, a cyberattack using the Stuxnet virus, attributed by Tehran to Israel and the US, led to a series of breakdowns in Iranian centrifuges used for uranium enrichment. Israel is also accused by Tehran of having assassinated two Iranian nuclear physicists in 2010, and of having kidnapped another the previous year.

Israel has never declared that it possesses nuclear weapons itself, but is generally believed to do so. In 2021, the Federation of American Scientists estimated that Israel has about 90 warheads.

Overnight NBC News in the US has reported that government officials there have told it that they expect to see a limited response from Israel to the weekend’s attack from Iran. The news network reports:

Because the Iranian attack did not result in Israeli deaths or widespread destruction, the US officials said, Israel could respond with one of its less aggressive options – strikes outside Iran.

The options could include striking inside Syria, three US officials said. The officials do not expect the response to target senior Iranian officials but to instead strike shipments or storage facilities with advanced missile parts, weapons or components that are sent from Iran to Hezbollah.

The US does not intend to take part in the military response, the officials added. They do expect Israel to share information about the actions with Washington in advance, specifically if it could have negative repercussions for Americans in the region.

Israel’s military has issued its daily operational briefing about its activity in Gaza.

In a short statement, the IDF said:

Over the past day, IDF troops continued to operate in the central Gaza Strip, during which IDF tanks killed a number of terrorists identified advancing towards them.

IDF troops also directed IAF aircraft that struck terrorist infrastructure.

Furthermore, over the past day, IDF fighter jets and aircraft destroyed a missile launcher along with dozens of terrorist infrastructure, terror tunnels, and military compounds where armed Hamas terrorists were located.

The claims have not been independently verified. The health ministry in Gaza has said that over 33,000 people have been killed by Israeli military action in Gaza since 7 October.

UK government minister: there is value in retaining direct diplomatic relations with Tehran

In the UK, junior government minister Laura Farris has said there is some value in continuing to talk to the government in Iran when asked about the prospect of the UK proscribing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation.

The minister for victims and safeguarding told viewers of Sky News:

No one is denying that they are a malign force. We have repeatedly sanctioned both individual commanders and the IRGC more generally, so that puts very severe restrictions on their ability to move. And we’re not suggesting that they’re not a problem.

[But] one of the things [foreign secretary David Cameron] has been saying more widely is at the moment we have a direct diplomatic channel, a direct line of communication to Tehran. Even though relations are difficult, and those conversations are not always easy, there is actually something positive about being able to have face-to-face diplomatic relations.

This is a unique moment of tension in the Middle East and for the wider region. Everything is focused on cool heads, avoiding escalation.

Israel’s foreign minister has said he is “leading a political attack against Iran” and has written to 32 countries “demanding that sanctions be imposed on the Iranian missile project and that the Revolutionary Guards be declared a terrorist organization.”

Israel Katz has said this was “alongside the military response to the firing of the missiles and the UAVs”

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לצד התגובה הצבאית על ירי הטילים והכטב&quot;מים, אני מוביל מתקפה מדינית נגד איראן. שיגרתי הבוקר מכתבים ל-32 מדינות ושוחחתי עם עשרות שרי חוץ וגורמים מובילים בעולם בדרישה להטיל סנקציות על פרויקט הטילים האיראני ולהכריז על משמרות המהפכה כארגון טרור, כדרך לבלימת והחלשת איראן.
חייבים לעצור… pic.twitter.com/QYGeAuuqRl

&mdash; ישראל כ”ץ Israel Katz (@Israel_katz) April 16, 2024

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לצד התגובה הצבאית על ירי הטילים והכטב”מים, אני מוביל מתקפה מדינית נגד איראן. שיגרתי הבוקר מכתבים ל-32 מדינות ושוחחתי עם עשרות שרי חוץ וגורמים מובילים בעולם בדרישה להטיל סנקציות על פרויקט הטילים האיראני ולהכריז על משמרות המהפכה כארגון טרור, כדרך לבלימת והחלשת איראן.
חייבים לעצור… pic.twitter.com/QYGeAuuqRl

— ישראל כ”ץ Israel Katz (@Israel_katz) April 16, 2024

Reuters reports that US national security adviser Jake Sullivan has postponed a visit to India scheduled for this week due to “ongoing events in the Middle East”. It cited the US embassy in New Delhi.

Helen Davidson

Helen Davidson

Helen Davidson is a Guardian correspondent based in Taipei

China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, has spoken to his Iranian and Saudi counterparts about the fears of tensions in the Middle East escalating. According to Chinese readouts of the calls, Wang told Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, that China was confident Iran could “handle the situation well and spare the region further turmoil while safeguarding its own sovereignty and dignity.”

The readout summary of the call, published on China’s official state media outlet Xinhua, said Wang told Amir-Abdollahian that China noted Iran’s description of its actions as limited and carried out in self-defence. Wang and Amir-Abdollahian both repeated calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

In a separate call with Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, Wang said Beijing was willing to work with Riyahd to de-escalate tensions in the Middle East, according to Xinhua. It added that Saudi Arabia “highly expects” China to play an active and important role in that regard, and that his country is willing to strengthen communication and coordination with China to promote an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in Gaza.

The calls followed statements by China’s UN representative to an extraordinary meeting of the security council yesterday, which condemned Israel’s airstrike on Iran’s Syria consulate, which he suggested had significantly escalated the conflict as many international parties had warned.

Speaking after that meeting, the deputy chief of the Israeli mission in China told reporters: “We were hoping for stronger condemnation and clear acknowledgment of Israel’s right to defend itself.”

UN watchdog ‘concerned’ by possibility of Israel strike on Iran nuclear facilities

The UN nuclear watchdog chief has said he is concerned about Israel possibly targeting Iranian nuclear facilities, in retaliation for the weekends attacks on its territory.

Israel’s military chief said on Monday his country would respond to the missile and drone attack by Iran, launched in retaliation for a suspected Israeli airstrike on its embassy compound in Damascus on 1 April.

IAEA director general, Rafael Grossi, said Iran closed its nuclear facilities on Sunday over “security considerations” and that while they reopened on Monday, he kept IAEA inspectors away “until we see that the situation is completely calm.”

When asked about the possibility of an Israel strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, Grossi said: “We are always concerned about this possibility.” He urged “extreme restraint.”

Welcome and summary

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s continuing coverage of the Middle East crisis. Here are the headlines …

  • The UN nuclear watchdog chief has said he is concerned about Israel possibly targeting Iranian nuclear facilities, in retaliation for the weekends attacks on its territory.

  • Israel will respond to Iran’s weekend missile and drone attack on its territory, the IDF’s chief of staff said on Monday. “This launch of so many missiles, cruise missiles, and drones into Israeli territory will be met with a response,” chief of staff Herzi Halevi said, speaking from the Nevatim air force base in southern Israel, which sustained some damage in the attack.

  • Iran does not want increased tensions but will respond immediately and more strongly than before if Israel retaliates, Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian told his British counterpart on Monday, according to Iranian state media.

  • Israeli settlers killed two Palestinians on Monday in the occupied West Bank province of Nablus, Salah Bani Jaber, the mayor of Aqraba, told Reuters.

  • Israel has moved in a “significant way” but Hamas is the barrier to a deal that would see fighting in Gaza paused and hostages released, state department spokesperson Matthew Miller said. Hamas rejected the latest proposed deal and has said any new hostage deal must bring about an end to the Gaza war and withdrawal of all Israeli forces, Reuters reports.

  • A UN report said that Israel has destroyed over 3,000 buildings within a 1km “buffer zone” that it is creating inside the Gaza Strip along the territory’s border with Israel.

  • Emmanuel Macron has said that France will do everything to avoid an escalation in the Middle East. He told the BFMTV news channel “We need to be by Israel’s side to ensure its protection to the maximum, but also to call for a limit to avoid an escalation.”

  • The Netherlands said it will reopen its embassy in Tehran on Tuesday after closing it for two days for safety reasons. It added in the statement that it does not exclude a new closure of its embassy.

It is Martin Belam with you here today for the next few hours, and you can reach me at martin.belam@theguardian.com

The Guardian

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