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24-12-2023
TEHRAN: An Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander said the Mediterranean Sea could be closed if the United States and its allies continued to commit “crimes” in Gaza, Iranian media reported on Saturday, without explaining how that would happen.
Iran backs Hamas against Israel and it accuses the United States of backing what it calls Israeli crimes in Gaza, where weeks of bombardment have killed thousands of people and driven most of the population from their homes.
“They shall soon await the closure of the Mediterranean Sea, (the Strait of) Gibraltar and other waterways,” Tasnim quoted Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi, coordinating commander of the Guards, as saying.
Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi group has over the past month attacked merchant vessels sailing through the Red Sea in retaliation for Israel’s assault on Gaza, leading some shipping companies to switch routes.
The White House on Friday said Iran was “deeply involved” in planning operations against commercial vessels in the Red Sea.
Iran has no direct access to the Mediterranean itself and it was not clear how the Guards could attempt to close it off, although Naqdi talked of “the birth of new powers of resistance and the closure of other waterways”.
“Yesterday, the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz became a nightmare for them, and today they are trapped … in the Red Sea,” Naqdi was quoted as saying.
The only groups backed by Iran on the Mediterranean are Lebanon’s Hezbollah and allied militia in Syria, at the far end of the sea from Gibraltar.
Israel battled Hamas militants on Saturday in pursuit of its elusive interim goal of full control of northern Gaza after the UN Security Council appealed for more aid for the Palestinian enclave but stopped short of demanding a ceasefire.
Thick smoke hung over the northern town of Jabalia which is also home to Gaza’s largest refugee camp and residents reported persistent aerial bombardment and shelling from Israeli tanks, which they said had moved further into the town.
Earlier, the first 10 weeks of the Israel-Gaza war have been the deadliest recorded for journalists, with the most journalists killed in a single year in one location, the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said on Thursday.
Most of the journalists and media workers killed in the war 61 out of 68 were Palestinian. The report said it was “particularly concerned about an apparent pattern of targeting of journalists and their families by the Israeli military.”
Four Israeli and three Lebanese journalists, including Reuters visuals journalist Issam Abdallah, were also killed between Oct. 7 and Dec. 20, CPJ data showed.
The group, a nonprofit organization that promotes press freedom worldwide, said it was further investigating the circumstances of all journalist deaths. It said such efforts in Gaza were hampered by widespread destruction and by the killing of journalists’ family members, who typically serve as sources for investigators looking into how the journalists died. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
