Tehran, Oct 23 (IANS) Iran has warned regional countries that any support for the United States (US) in the event of a renewed armed conflict would be regarded as a hostile act toward Tehran, an Iranian official said on Friday.
Iran would be able to identify which regional states are prepared to back American forces if military action resumes, Fada Hossein Maleki, a member of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, told RIA Novosti in an interview.
“In that case, the decisions taken by Iran may go beyond strikes on the military bases of those countries, and those countries themselves will be classified as hostile states,” he added.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi said on the same day that the United States has spent 11 billion US dollars in taxpayers’ money on missile defence for Israel within the past three years, Xinhua News Agency reported.
“It has fired more interceptors defending Israel than Israel has,” Araghchi said. “That is not a symbiotic relationship. It is a parasitic one.”
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump suggested that further military action against Iran remained possible, while acknowledging that the war could carry a political cost for Republicans in the approaching congressional elections.
Asked how the conflict had affected the election campaign, Trump said Americans were divided over his decision but defended it as necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
“Well in one way, they love it because I’m doing what should have been done by other presidents, and another way maybe they don’t,” he told reporters before departing Washington.
“It’s — there’s a price to pay, which I knew immediately when I did it, but we can’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon.”
Trump did not specify whether he was considering a new operation, identify potential targets or give a timetable.
“The Iran War, and we’ve knocked the hell out of them, and we may do it a little bit further,” he said.
–IANS
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