Iran has dismissed as akin to child’s play the reported Israeli retaliation for an unprecedented Iranian strike, as both sides yesterday appeared to step back from wider conflict stemming from the war in Gaza.
However, a deadly blast at an Iraqi military base emphasized the high tensions which persist, and witnesses in Gaza reported more strikes there.
Fears of a wider Middle East war escalated this month.
Photo: AFP
Israel had warned it would hit back after Iran fired hundreds of missiles and drones one week ago in retaliation for a deadly April 1 airstrike — which Iran blamed on Israel — that leveled the Iranian consulate in Damascus and killed seven Revolutionary Guards.
The Israeli retaliation appeared to come on Friday, when Iranian media reported blasts in the central province of Isfahan.
Fars news agency reported that “three explosions” were close to Qahjavarestan, near Isfahan airport and the Eighth Shekari army airbase.
“What happened last night was no attack,” Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Hossein Amir-Abdollahian told NBC News in a Friday interview. “It was the flight of two or three quadcopters, which are at the level of toys that our children use in Iran.”
“As long as there is no new adventure on behalf of the Israeli regime against Iran’s interests, we will have no response,” he added.
Israeli officials have made no public comment on what a senior US congressional source said were retaliatory Israeli strikes against Iran.
Tensions soared after the attack on Iran’s consulate, but violence involving Iran-backed groups had already surged throughout the Middle East alongside the Gaza war.
Officials in Iraq yesterday said one person was killed and eight wounded in an explosion at an Iraqi military base housing a coalition of pro-Iranian armed groups.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been under international pressure over the civilian toll in Gaza’s war.
Iranian political expert Hamid Gholamzadeh said that Netanyahu needs “further escalation and another war to distract the world attention” from Gaza.
However, foreign ministers of G7 nations, meeting in Italy on Friday, kept up that pressure.
The group said they opposed a “full-scale military operation in Rafah,” where most of Gaza’s population is sheltering, because it would have “catastrophic consequences” for civilians.
Yesterday, Palestinian Civil Defense said an overnight Israeli strike in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost point, killed nine members of a family including six children.
“It has been a very hard night,” agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said in a statement that reported several other areas of Rafah hit.
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