Iran’s foreign minister on Friday refused to acknowledge that Israel was behind the recent attack on his country and described the weapons used as children’s toys.
“What happened last night was not a strike,” Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdolakhian told NBC News’ Tom Lamas. “It was more like toys that our children play with – not drones”.
Amirabdollahian, speaking to NBC News in New York where he was attending a meeting of the UN Security Council, said Iran does not plan to respond unless Israel launches a major attack.
“As long as there is no new adventurism by Israel against our interests, then we are not going to have new reactions,” he said.
But the foreign minister warned that if Israel attacked Iran, the response would be swift and severe.
“If Israel takes decisive action against my country and this is shown to us,” he said, “our response will be immediate and to the maximum and will make them regret it.”
The latest round of violence between Israel and Iran began on April 1 when Israel bombed an Iranian consular building in the Syrian capital of Damascus, killing two generals and five officers of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Iran responded 12 days later by launching a an unprecedented, direct military attack on Israel which includes more than 300 missiles and drones. However, the attack did not cause significant damage. Almost all of the missiles and drones were intercepted by Israeli, US and other allied forces.
Amirabdollahian said the attack was meant to be “a warning”. “We could have hit Haifa and Tel Aviv,” he said. “We could have also targeted all of Israel’s economic ports.”
“But our red lines were the citizens,” he added. “We only had a military purpose.”
Although Israel is locked down a shadow war with Israel for decades, with Iran arming and training proxy forces hostile to Israel in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and the Palestinian Gaza Strip, the Iranian air barrier marked the first time Tehran had carried out an overt military strike in Israel.
In the days that followed, the Biden administration urged Israel to show restraint and not launch a retaliatory attack that could trigger an all-out war between the two longtime rivals.
Israel, however, retaliated on Thursday night by striking a military airfield near the central Iranian city of Isfahan. Nuclear facilities in the area were not damaged, according to Iranian state media, and there were no reports of casualties.
The attack was downplayed by Iran’s state media and met with mostly silence from Israeli officials. The limited scope of the strike and the lack of public statements afterward appear to suggest both sides are trying to ease tensions, experts said.
American officials called for calm. “We don’t want to see this conflict escalate,” White House press secretary Karin Jean-Pierre said Friday.
The Biden administration has accused Iran of being “complicit” in Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, citing Tehran’s long-standing effort to arm and train Hamas fighters in the Gaza Strip.
Iran supports Hamas, but the government said it did not order or coordinate the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which killed about 1,200 people.
In his interview, Amirabdollahian said Iran had no prior knowledge of the Hamas attack. He also said that Hamas is not a terrorist organization but a liberation movement that opposes the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land.
He called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “independent” and blamed the Israeli government for stalled hostage negotiations. He accused Israel of making excessive demands to compensate for its failure to meet its goals in the Gaza war.
“He was not able to destroy Hamas or capture the leaders inside Gaza, he was not able to disarm Hamas, he was not able to destroy the weapons and equipment,” Amirabdolakhian said.
“Therefore, he had to resort to killing women and children,” he added, “and now at the negotiating table they are trying to get what they couldn’t get on the ground.”
But the foreign minister said he hoped an agreement would soon be reached to release the hostages as part of a broad settlement. Hamas is “ready to proceed with the release of prisoners in the form of an all-inclusive humanitarian political package.”
“I think now is a good time,” he said. “There’s a good chance for that.”