Iran denounces US airstrikes amid peace talks
Iran on Tuesday denounced US strikes a day earlier as a sign of “bad faith and unreliability” as negotiations continue toward a possible deal to end the war.
The US military has characterised on Monday’s strikes in southern Iran as defensive, saying targets included missile launch sites and boats placing mines, and said the US acted with “restraint” in light of the weekslong ceasefire. Iran’s foreign ministry called the strikes a ceasefire violation and warned that Washington would bear responsibility for “all consequences”, without details.
The Islamic Republic of Iran will leave no act of aggression unanswered,” it added in a statement.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard on Tuesday said it had shot down and deterred drones and a fighter jet that entered its airspace, according to Iran’s official Mizan news agency, which did not specify when the incident occurred.
It wasn’t immediately clear what the developments would mean for negotiations. The strikes came after Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf went to Qatar as part of the talks, which US President Donald Trump said Monday were “proceeding nicely”.
The strikes were the latest flare-up in the fragile ceasefire that began on April 7 and has largely held. Negotiations centre in part on the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial waterway off southern Iran through which a fifth of the world’s crude oil and natural gas passed before the war began with US-Israeli strikes in February. Tehran retaliated by effectively closing the strait, stranding hundreds of ships and shocking the global economy.
The strait has become a powerful lever for Tehran in talks, joining the long-running issue of Iran’s nuclear programme and highly enriched uranium. Iran in turn, wants the US to lift its military blockade of Iranian ports that began on April 17.
The strait also is cause for growing concern as supplies of fertilizer are also badly affected for vulnerable global farmers. “What we are witnessing today is not only a geopolitical crisis, it is a systemic shock to the global agrifood system,” the director-general of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, Qu Dongyu, said Tuesday.
Not in favour of Pakistan joining Abraham Accords: Defence Minister
Islamabad: Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif has said that he was not in favour of Islamabad joining the Abraham Accords to normalise relations with Israel. His comments came after US President Donald Trump asked countries involved in the peace talks with Iran to sign on to the Abraham Accords, which deal with establishing diplomatic and security ties between Israel and Arab nations. “Personally, I don’t think we should join any such accord which clashes with our fundamental ideologies,” Asif said during an interview on a talk show with Samaa TV on Monday night. Among the negotiators, the UAE and Bahrain are already members of the Accords, and Trump expects Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkiye, Egypt and Jordan to sign up. Pakistan’s defence minister also talked about his country’s long-standing position to not accept Israel until the Palestinian state on the pre-1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital is established. “We have a very clear stance that it is not acceptable to us,” he said. The minister also highlighted the question of credibility. “How will you sit with those people whose word cannot be trusted for even a single day?” he asked. He also mentioned Pakistan’s passport, which says it is not valid for travel to Israel.
Asif is among the politicians who vehemently oppose any idea of normalisation of ties with the Jewish state. Last month, he called Israel a “curse for humanity”, while accusing it of carrying out genocide in the region.
