Iran’s president accuses Israel of seeking wider war in Middle East

Iran’s president has accused Israel of seeking a wider war in the Middle East and laying “traps” to lead his country into a wider conflict.

Masoud Pezeshkian told about two dozen media representatives that Iran does not want to see the current war in Gaza and airstrikes across the Israeli-Lebanon border expanded.

He said while Israel insists it does not want a wider war, it is taking actions that show otherwise.

Mr Pezeshkian pointed to the deadly explosions of pagers, walkie-talkies and other electronic devices in Lebanon last week, which he blamed on Israel, and the assassination of Hamas’ political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31, hours after Pezeshkian’s inauguration.

“They are dragging us to a point where we do not wish to go,” the Iranian leader said of Israel.

“There is no winner in warfare. We are only fooling ourselves if we believe that.”

Asked when Iran will respond to the killing of Haniyeh, he replied: “We will give our answer in an appropriate time and place.”

Mr Pezeshkian said the Iranian drone and missile attacks on Israel, which came in April in response to an attack on an Iranian consular building in Syria’s capital that Tehran blamed on Israel, proved its defensive capabilities.

But he insisted that Iran would not supply Russia with ballistic missiles to attack Ukraine.

“We have never approved Russia’s aggression on Ukraine,” he said.

He said the two countries should establish a dialogue.

Mr Pezeshkian was asked about Iran’s nuclear programme following the Trump administration’s withdrawal from its 2015 nuclear deal with the US, Russia, China, the UK, France and Germany which has seen Tehran expand its uranium enrichment from 3.67% purity to 60% purity, making many countries in the West nervous that it is seeking to make a nuclear weapon.

The Iranian president reiterated that weapons of mass destruction have no place in Iran and its military structures.