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17-04-2024
JERUSALEM: Israel is calling for sanctions to be imposed on Iran’s missile project after it launched an unprecedented attack on its territory.
A wave of missiles and drones were fired from Iran, Iraq, Syria and Yemen on Saturday, with most being downed by Israel and its allies.
Israel’s war cabinet has met but not said what it plans to do, the military chief of staff has said the attack will not go unanswered.
Tehran says the attack was retaliation for the presumed Israeli air strike on its consulate in Syria on 1 April, in which 13 people were killed.
Since the Israel-Gaza war erupted six months ago, Israel has ramped up its targeting of Iran over its funding and arming of Hamas.
Meanwhile in Gaza, Israeli forces have begun a military operation in Beit Hanoun, a town in the north east of the strip.
The UN says Israel is still imposing “unlawful restrictions” on aid for Gaza, despite facing increasing pressure to allow more humanitarian supplies in.
Ravina Shamdasani, a UN human rights office spokesperson, says Israel is also carrying out “widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure”.
The Israeli agency which coordinates aid into Gaza, Cogat says a food convoy entered Gaza yesterday via a new northern crossing.
The agency said on X that “126 aid trucks coordinated to northern Gaza overnight”, adding that two bakeries are operational in northern Gaza “supplying 800,000 pita breads for the local population”.
The Hamas-run health ministry says at least 33,843 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed since October.
The toll includes at least 46 deaths over the past 24 hours, a ministry statement says, adding that 76,575 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip.
The two countries were allies until the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, which brought in a regime that has used opposing Israel as a key part of its ideology.
Iran does not recognize Israel’s right to exist and seeks its eradication.
The country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has previously called Israel a “cancerous tumour” that “will undoubtedly be uprooted and destroyed”.
Israel believes that Iran poses an existential threat as evidenced by Tehran’s rhetoric, its build-up of proxy forces sworn to Israel’s destruction, its funding and arming of Palestinian groups including Hamas and of the Lebanese Shia militant group Hezbollah, and what it believes is Iran’s secret pursuit of nuclear weapons, though Iran denies seeking to build a nuclear bomb.
An Iranian TV news presenter who was stabbed outside his home in London last month says he thinks Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) should be proscribed as a terrorist organization in the UK.
Iran International presenter Pouria Zeraati, 36, was attacked by a group outside his home in Wimbledon, south London.
A spokesperson for Iran International says the IRGC – a major military, political and economic force in Iran has been targeting journalists and their families.
Counter-terrorism officers are leading the investigation, while the Iran has denied any involvement.
Speaking to media Radio 4’s Today program, Zeraati says that what happened to him, together with Iran’s attempts to “destabilize the peace and prosperity in the Middle East” and the suppression of anti-government protests inside Iran, are some of the reasons “they can be considered as a terrorist organization”. (Int’l News Desk)
