We Won't be Able to Stop Israel if Iran Responds, US Warned Iran
The US has reportedly warned Iran in recent days against launching another attack on Israel, adding that Washington will not be able to restrain Israel if it attacks again, the Axios news site reported Saturday, citing an unnamed US official and former Israeli official.
“We told the Iranians: We won’t be able to hold Israel back, and we won’t be able to make sure that the next attack will be calibrated and targeted as the previous one,” the US official was quoted as saying.
The report quoted the official as saying the message had been conveyed directly to the Iranians, though the Israeli source said a message was passed to Tehran via Swiss intermediaries.
There was no response from Washington or Tehran to the report, which came hours after Iran’s supreme leader threatened Israel and the US with “a crushing response” over attacks on Iran and its allies.
Iranian officials are increasingly threatening to launch yet another strike against Israel in response to Jerusalem’s October 26 attack on the Islamic Republic that targeted military bases and facilities and which Iran said killed at least five people.
Israel’s retaliatory strikes on Iranian military facilities came weeks after the Islamic Republic’s October 1 attack, in which Iran launched some 200 ballistic missiles at Israel, sending most of the population rushing to bomb shelters and safe rooms, causing relatively minor damage to military bases and some residential areas, and killing a Palestinian man in the West Bank.
Any further attacks from either side could engulf the wider Middle East, already teetering over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip and Israel’s ground operation of Lebanon, into a wider regional conflict just ahead of the US presidential election this Tuesday.q
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