TEHRAN – Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on May 27 a return to war with the United States is unlikely, while warning that the Islamic republic stands ready against any attack.
The statement came a day after Iran accused the US of breaching the ceasefire in place since April, and warned it is ready to retaliate after the most serious strikes since the truce took effect.
In Lebanon, where violence has far from ceased despite a truce in Israel’s war with Hezbollah, Israeli strikes killed 31 people on May 26, four of them children, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.
The Middle East war erupted in late February with US-Israeli strikes on Iran, spreading swiftly across multiple fronts and engulfing the region while throwing global energy markets into chaos.
“The possibility of war is low because of the enemy’s weakness. The armed forces are lying in wait with full magazines,” said Mr Mohammad Akbarzadeh, deputy political chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, was quoted by Tasnim news agency as saying.
“Do not doubt that we will turn the area from Chabahar to Mahshahr into a graveyard for aggressors,” he said, naming places at each end of Iran’s lengthy southern coast.
Iran and the US have for weeks been engaged in a war of words as they negotiate a deal with mediation efforts led by Pakistan.
With no clear winner in the war, neither side appears ready to compromise on the key sticking points in negotiations, which include the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s nuclear programme.
Iran blockaded the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway that is vital to global energy flows, in retaliation for the war, while the US responded with a counterblockade of Iranian ports.
Iranian state media reported blasts in the southern port city of Bandar Abbas, near the Strait of Hormuz, and the Revolutionary Guards said on May 26 its forces downed a US drone entering its airspace and fired at an F-35 fighter jet.
“The US terrorist army, continuing its illegal and unjustified actions since the ceasefire has, in the past 48 hours, committed a gross violation of the ceasefire in the Hormozgan region,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry said.
It added that Tehran “will not leave any evil unanswered and will not hesitate to defend the Iranian nation”, without elaborating.
Hours earlier, US Central Command spokesman Captain Tim Hawkins had announced the new American strikes on Iran.
“US forces conducted self-defence strikes in southern Iran today to protect our troops from threats posed by Iranian forces,” Capt Hawkins said.
He gave few details of the attacks and said only that the targets included missile launch sites and boats trying to “emplace mines”.
In a statement marking the start of the Eid al-Adha holiday, Tehran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei declared Washington is losing its influence in the Middle East and warned countries in the region to stop hosting bases from which the US can launch attacks.
The United States, he said in a written statement, “in addition to no longer having any safe haven in the region for aggression and the establishment of military bases, is moving further and further away from its former position with each passing day”.
Despite the strikes, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on May 26 that a peace deal remains within reach, while insisting that the Strait of Hormuz will be reopened “one way or the other”.
In southern Lebanon, Israel carried out strikes on May 26 that Beirut’s Health Ministry said killed 31 people, including at least four children.
A man assesses the damage to an apartment building in the aftermath of an Israeli air strike in the Burj al-Shemali village near Tyre, Lebanon.
PHOTO: DANIEL BEREHULAK/NYTIMES
Iran has demanded that any peace accord apply to Lebanon, where an April 17 truce has failed to stop fighting that began when the militant group Hezbollah attacked Israel in early March.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on May 25 to “crush” Hezbollah, and an Israeli military official said the following day that Israel’s forces were expanding their ground operations deeper inside Lebanon.
Work on a peace deal between Washington and Tehran is still ongoing, with Iranian state broadcaster IRIB saying a top delegation returned from a two-day visit to Qatar on May 26, while Iran said it was finalising a 14-point framework for a deal on ending the war.
In a telephone conversation with Qatari ruler Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani on May 26, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said his country was “ready to reach a respectful framework to end the war”, according to IRIB. AFP
