Tehran Ready to Welcome any Initiative to End the War, Trump Says “No,” Iran Vows to Kill Netanyahu “If still Alive”
Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Mar 15: Even as the Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi on Sunday said Tehran would welcome any initiative to end the West Asia war, the United States President Donald Trump said he was not ready to seek a deal to end the war with Iran and its ally Israel launched a new wave of strikes on Sunday and Tehran’s Revolutionary Guards threatened to hunt down and kill the Israeli leader.
Mr Araghchi also denied that Iran targeted any civilian or residential areas in the neighbouring Arab countries in the ongoing war and said Israel could be behind the attacks. He said Iran was ready to form a probe panel with regional countries on targets that were attacked. Iran had earlier claimed that Israel and US were rebranding their Shahed drones to frame Iran.
Amid unverified claims and rumours about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s safety with the Israel PM’s office debunking the reports of his possible death, Iran Guards on Sunday vowed to ‘pursue and kill’ him. “If this child-killing criminal is alive, we will continue to pursue and kill him with full force,” the Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said in a statement amid social media posts raising questions about the whereabouts if Netanyahu, who has reportedly not been seen in public for a few days.
The US president in an interview said he thought Tehran was keen to come to the table but that Washington would fight on for better terms and might bomb targets on Iran’s oil hub Kharg Island once, again, “just for fun.” More than two weeks into the U.S.-Israeli war against the Islamic republic, neither side is moderating its rhetoric despite a mounting death toll and economic damage from soaring oil prices caused by the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz sea lane.
“Iran wants to make a deal, and I don’t want to make it because the terms aren’t good enough yet,” Mr Trump said warning that the U.S. forces would step up strikes on the Iranian coast north of the strait to clear a path for oil shipments to resume. Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, has — in a written statement — vowed to keep Hormuz closed. But Mr Trump dismissed this and suggested his foe might not even be in control, saying: “I don’t know if he’s even alive. So far, nobody has been able to show him.” Iran, however, said, said on Saturday that “there is no problem with the new Supreme Leader,” even though he has yet to appear in public.
The US has urged its citizens to leave Iraq where pro-Iranian groups have launched attacks on the U.S. embassy and bases hosting western military units. Despite the hardline talk from all sides, the citizens of Tehran were able to go about their work week in the most normal atmosphere since the start of the war on February 28, when U.S.-Israeli strikes killed the previous Supreme Leader, Mojtaba’s father Ali Khamenei.
Traffic was busier than last week, and some cafes and restaurants had reopened. One resident whizzed down the street on an electric hoverboard, and more than a third of stalls in the Tajrish bazaar, a popular shopping hub in the north of the capital, had reopened, five days before Nowruz, the Persian New Year.
Some shoppers queued at ATMs to withdraw cash. Online operations at Bank Melli, one of the country’s largest, had been paralysed in recent days. Further on, passengers were waiting at bus stops, which had been largely deserted since the beginning of the war.
Mr Trump has suggested an international naval operation could escort oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, lessening pressure on the oil price and securing supplies for countries whose economies are most exposed to the conflict. “Hopefully China, France, Japan, South Korea, the U.K., and others, that are affected by this artificial constraint, will send Ships to the area,” Mr Trump said in a social media post on Saturday.
Asked about this, the U.K. Ministry of Defence was non-committal. “As we’ve said previously, we are currently discussing with our allies and partners a range of options to ensure the security of shipping in the region,” it said. South Korea said it was “closely monitoring President Trump’s remarks on social media.”
The policy chief of Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s ruling party, Takayuki Kobayashi, said the bar for sending Japanese navy ships to the region under existing laws was “extremely high.” Bahrain and Saudi Arabia said separately on Sunday that they had intercepted renewed barrages of projectiles. The authorities in Dubai also said air defences had made further interceptions after Iran’s military warned the UAE civilians to avoid port areas.
U.S. forces struck Iran’s Kharg Island on Friday from which nearly all of Iran’s oil exports flow — but both sides confirmed that the strikes only took out military defences and left the oil export terminals intact. More than 1,200 people have been killed by U.S. and Israeli strikes, according to Iranian Health Ministry figures that could not be independently verified.
The U.N. refugee agency says up to 3.2 million people have been displaced in Iran, most of them fleeing the capital and other cities to seek safety. The Pentagon claims that more than 15,000 targets in Iran have been hit by U.S. and Israeli forces. U.S. media reported that the Pentagon has dispatched the amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli and around 2,500 Marines to the region.
Loud explosions were reportedly heard in central Israel on Sunday morning that followed air raid sirens there in view of Iranian missile strike there. Earlier, Iran on launched missile strikes on Saudi’s Al Kharj Air Base, used by the US military. The IRGC said Al Kharj base served as the “origin of aggressions against the Islamic homeland,” functioning as the staging ground for US F-35 and F-16 fighter jets involved in attacks on Iran.
Meanwhile, loud explosions were reported from Bahrain’s Manama on Sunday morning. At least 15 workers were also killed in an airstrike on a factory in Iran’s Isfahan city on Saturday. While Israel’s military denied a role in the airstrike, the US military declined to respond to a media query.
