Iran Calls On Islamic Countries To Sanction Israel
Iran says members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) should impose an oil embargo and other sanctions on Israel and expel all Israeli ambassadors.
Iran says members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) should impose an oil embargo and other sanctions on Israel and expel all Israeli ambassadors.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian made the remarks Wednesday on the sidelines of the OIC’s urgent open-ended extraordinary meeting to discuss the escalating Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The meeting is taking place in the Saudi city of Jeddah to after a blast at a Gaza hospital late on Tuesday killed large numbers of Palestinians.
"The foreign minister calls for an immediate and complete embargo on Israel by Islamic countries, including oil sanctions, in addition to expelling Israeli ambassadors if relations with the Zionist regime have been established," the foreign ministry said in a statement.
Amirabdollahian also called for the formation of a team of Islamic lawyers to document potential war crimes committed by Israel in Gaza.
Prior to the blast at the Gaza hospital on Tuesday, health authorities in Gaza said at least 3,000 people had died during Israel's 11-day bombardment that began after a Hamas October 7 rampage on southern Israeli communities in which 1,300 people were killed and around 200 were taken into Gaza as hostages.
Iran’s ruler Ali Khamenei downplayed the killing of Israeli civilians in a speech on Tuesday, saying they were armed, and that Israel has killed many more Palestinians.
The Islamic Republic, led by the 83-year-old authoritarian ruler, has been financially and militarily supporting Hamas, the Lebanese Hezbollah and other militant organization designated as terrorist groups by several Western countries. The government ordered street celebration and vowed to continue support for Hamas.
The attempted attack was the first in more than a year and comes after Iran’s proxies in Iraq made threats following the Israeli bombing of Gaza in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack.
The officials, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, declined to say who was suspected of the attack but Washington is on heightened alert for activity by Iran-backed groups amid soaring tension in the region over the Israel-Hamas war.
Last week, Iraqi armed groups controlled by Iran threatened to target US interests with missiles and drones if Washington intervened to support Israel's conflict with Hamas in Gaza.
The one-way attack drones were intercepted as they attempted to strike Iraq's al Asad air base, which hosts American troops, the officials said.
The attack came hours after a strike on a Gaza hospital killed hundreds of Palestinians, raising the stakes for US President Joe Biden as he flies to Israel on Wednesday to signal support for its war against Hamas.
Israel blamed the blast at Al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital on a failed rocket launch by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, which denied responsibility.
Palestinian officials said an Israeli air strike hit the hospital, with the Palestinian Authority's health minister accusing Israel of causing a "massacre".
In Iraq, tension over the war in Gaza had already been high. Its top Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, last week condemned Israel and called on the world to stand up to the "terrible brutality" in Gaza.
Leaders of Iraqi armed groups blamed Israel for the attack on the hospital. Some of them condemned the US for supporting Israel.
Kataib Hezbollah, a powerful armed faction with close ties to Iran, said that the United States, which is supporting Israel in "killing innocent people", should leave Iraq.
"These evil people must leave the country, otherwise they will taste the fire of hell in this world before the afterlife," the group said in a statement last night.
Iraqi politician Hadi Al-Amiri, leader of the political and military group the Badr Organization, which is close to Iran, also blamed Israel for the attack on the hospital and described it as "the massacre of the era, which can only be classified as a war crime" and condemned the US and Western countries for supporting Israel.
We “will not hesitate to consider America and the West as partners in this hideous massacre”, he said in a statement on Tuesday night. Last week he threatened to target US interests if Washington intervened to support Israel.
The United States currently has 2,500 troops in Iraq - and an additional 900 in neighboring Syria - on a mission to advise and assist local forces in combating Islamic State, which in 2014 seized swathes of territory in both countries.
In past years, Iranian-backed militias in Iraq regularly targeted US forces in Iraq and the U.S. embassy in Baghdad with rockets, though such attacks have abated under a truce in place since last year, as Iraq enjoys a period of relative calm.
US officials have accused Kataib Hezbollah of previous attacks on US interests. The group has denied the claims.
Dozens of members of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), the state paramilitary organization that contains many Iran-backed factions, took to the streets on Tuesday to condemn the hospital attack.
Demonstrators chanted anti-US and anti-Israeli slogans and said they wanted to storm the US embassy for its support of Israel.
A Reuters witness said that some of the protesters tried to cross the bridge that leads to the fortified Green Zone - home to the US embassy and other missions in Baghdad - but were blocked by the security forces.
Reporting by Reuters
In one such threats, Ali Fadavi, the outspoken deputy commander of the IRGC, warned that Israel might face another surprise from Hamas if it proceeds with a ground offensive in Gaza.
Khamenei in a speech on Tuesday made indirect threats, saying that Muslims everywhere are angry, and it might be hard to control their reactions if Israeli ground forces enter the Gaza Strip. He also dismissed the issue of more than 1,300 Israeli civilian deaths, saying that even more Palestinians have been killed.
Israel awaits the arrival of US President Joe Biden on Wednesday in a bid to contain the conflict and prevent other players, such as Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah, from getting involved.
In the meantime, in a video on social media an Iranian individual, most likely an IRGC officer in southern Lebanon is heard speaking in Persian "begging someone for something" over the phone or wireless radio. This is not the only indication that there are probably Iranians on the northern and southern borders of Israel helping the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas.
In Tehran, the hardline Farhikhtegan newspaper has reported without giving any sources or evidence that the US government has sent a message in writing to Iranian officials via Amir Saeed Iravani, the Islamic Republic's UN envoy in New York, calling on Iran to help contain the conflict over Gaza.
According to Farhikhtegan, the letter sent by the US government has four paragraphs three of which are about containing the conflict and preventing it from spilling into the region, and the fourth paragraph is a warning to Iran that if it enters the ongoing war, the United States will also become a party to the conflict. Since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, many observers have stated that if the United States enters the war, that would be a war against Iran and Hezbollah.
In another development, Acting IRGC Commander Ali Fadavi said on Tuesday that if Israel insists on carrying out a ground operation in Gaza, it will face another big surprise. This was a clear threat that Hamas operatives might attempt to enter Israeli territory once again or other Iranian proxies might open new fronts against Israel. Iranian officials have repeatedly issued the same threat during the past week.
In the meantime, news agencies quoted senior Hamas leaders as saying that non-Israelis held by Hamas in Gaza are not hostages and that they are likely to be released. However, those reports did not elaborate on how many foreigners have been taken hostage, and when, where and how they are going to be released. The reports simply said that foreign hostages will be released as the situation warrants. Promises to release the hostages are usually tactics to delay a major assault.
The Lebanese Hizballah also released a statement reporting that its forces have attacked IDF vehicles Tuesday morning at the border between Israel and Lebanon, the government-owned Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) reported.
Meanwhile, Al-Mayadin TV in Lebanon, which is linked to the Iranian government, reported on Tuesday that "Resistance forces" have targeted Israeli espionage devices near the border.
Al-Mayadin also reported that two Hezbollah gunmen have been killed in a conflict with Israeli forces Tuesday morning.
