Iran’s acting foreign minister on Monday rejected the US president’s proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza. Joe Biden and warned Israel of a full-scale war against Lebanon.
Ali Bagheri Kani traveled to Beirut for his first official visit since the death last month of his predecessor Hossein Amirabdollahian. a hardline official close to the Revolutionary Guard who died in a helicopter crash on May 19 near the border with Azerbaijan. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and other officials were also killed in the incident.
Tehran, a key ally of the Palestinian militant group in the Gaza Strip, backs several armed factions in the region, among which the Lebanese Shiite terrorist group Hezbollah is considered the most powerful. Hezbollah will be Iran’s first line of defense in the event of a direct conflict with Israel.
Hezbollah has had constant clashes with Israeli forces along the Lebanese-Israeli border since last October, against the backdrop of the Israeli war against Hamas in Gaza. Cross-border clashes have intensified in recent weeks, since the Israeli incursion into the town of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip.
“If the Americans are sincere, then instead of proposing plans under the name of a ceasefire, they should take one step, which is to end all assistance to the Israeli entity,” Bagheri Kani said at a news conference. from the Iranian embassy in Beirut. “Once aid to the Israeli entity is eliminated, it will not have the tools or the capacity to commit crimes against the Palestinians and the war will come to an end.”
Hamas said it “positively” received a multi-stage proposal, which includes the release of hostages and the delivery of aid to Gaza, as well as a path to a permanent ceasefire, while Israel maintains that it must be destroyed. to the armed wing of Hamas and its ability to govern the territory so that the war can be concluded.
The United States defended this Monday the proposal announced by the president, Joe Biden, for a truce agreement in the Gaza Strip in exchange for the release of the hostages kidnapped by Hamas, which has been criticized by members of the Government of the Israeli prime minister. , Benjamin Netanyahu.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said at a news conference that a “endless conflict in Gaza in search of some kind of total victory will not make Israel safer” because it will “exacerbate” tensions in the occupied West Bank and on the border with Lebanon.
According to the spokesperson for US diplomacy, the Israeli Army has already managed to dismantle the offensive capabilities of Hamas, so that the Palestinian Islamist group could not repeat an attack against Israel like the one on October 7 of last year.
While admitting that Hamas remains “a threat” to Israel’s security because it continues to launch rockets into its territory, Miller opined that “this situation cannot be addressed with a military response alone, but rather a political proposal is needed.”
(With information from AP)
