TEHRAN, Iran — Awaiting Israel’s promised retaliation for a massive missile attack earlier this month, Iran has balanced threats of a fierce response to any Israeli attack with diplomatic efforts to prevent escalation into all-out regional war.
Iran launched 200 ballistic missiles at Israel on October 1, saying it was a response to an Israeli strike that killed Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps General Abbas Nilforoushan in Beirut late last month. It also said it was in retaliation for the assassination of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July, an attack widely blamed on Israel.
Israel has vowed to respond to the direct missile barrage from Iran, the second Tehran has launched against it this year, with a “deadly, precise and surprising,” attack, according to Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, leading Iran to warn that it would in turn hit back if struck.
“If you make a mistake and attack our targets, whether in the region or in Iran, we will strike you again painfully,” IRGC chief Hossein Salami said on Thursday.
“The Zionist enemy should know that it is approaching the end of its miserable life,” the chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces, General Mohammad Bagheri, said on Friday, calling Israel a “cancerous tumor.”
The Islamic Republic severed all ties with Israel following the 1979 Iranian revolution that toppled the US-backed Shah, and has spent the subsequent decades engaged in an ongoing proxy conflict with the Jewish state.
Both Hamas and Hezbollah are part of the so-called axis of resistance — Tehran-backed terror groups and militias arrayed against Israel.
But the warnings from Iran’s military chiefs also come as Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has embarked on a regional tour in an intense diplomatic effort to prevent the conflict from spreading across the region.
Iran’s top diplomat has visited nine capitals in two weeks and talked with United Nations chief Antonio Guterres on Tuesday.
“We cannot say that these positions [of Iran] are contradictory,” Tehran-based international relations expert Ahmad Zeidabadi told AFP.
Araghchi “repeats the words of the military,” including that if Israel attacks, “Iran will give a painful response,” Zeidabadi said.
He added that Araghchi has said Iran is “totally ready for war,” while the country also intends to “reduce the escalation.”
“The question is to know by what mechanism,” Zeidabadi added.
Araghchi visited Lebanon’s capital Beirut a week after Nasrallah’s death.
The minister then went to Damascus where he met with his Syrian counterpart and President Bashar Assad, a close ally of Tehran.
These visits allowed Tehran “to reiterate Iran’s commitment to supporting its allies in the axis of resistance,” Hamidreza Azizi, a Berlin-based analyst at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, told AFP.
Araghchi also traveled to Saudi Arabia — whose ties with Iran have warmed in the past year — as well as Qatar, Iraq and Oman, the latter of which has long mediated indirect talks between Iran and the United States.
He then flew to Jordan, which has complicated relations with Tehran, then to Egypt, for the first trip there by an Iranian foreign minister since 2013.
On Friday, Araghchi was in Turkey, where he reiterated that Iran is “ready for any situation.”
“Iran wants Arab countries to turn away from the Israeli axis,” Zeidabadi said, after the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco normalized ties with Israel under the 2020 Abraham Accords backed by the US.
Azizi said Iran is pursuing “different objectives.”
In addition to reaffirming support for its allies, Araghchi has also delivered “a combination of warning and reassurance” to some Gulf countries, he said.
“Everybody is awaiting the Israeli response to the Iranian attack… and there have been talks about the potential use of the Arab states’ airspace” for attacking Iran, Azizi added.
Araghchi has given a “warning to these countries not to allow their territory or their airspace to be used for attacking Iran,” Azizi said.
Jordan has twice intercepted missiles and drones launched at Israel by Iran, first on April 13 and again on October 1, and has said it opposes any attack that violates its airspace, no matter who is responsible for it.
At the same time Araghchi has been “reassuring that Iran is still committed to the improvements of relations with these countries,” Azizi added.
“The foreign minister seeks to urgently bring together the policies of Iran and Arab countries” and to “reduce the military adventurism of Israeli leaders,” the government’s official newspaper Iran Daily said on Thursday.
“His diplomatic efforts aim to create peace and put an end to Israel’s crimes in the region,” it added.