Zarif: Israel’s ‘myth of invincibility’ has crumbled Iran says will respond if US withdraws from nuclear deal
Iran’s Foreign Minister said on Sunday the shooting down of an Israeli jet after it bombed a military site in Syria had shattered Israel’s “socalled invincibility,” reacting to a speech delivered earlier by Israel’s premier.
“Israel uses aggression as a policy against its neighbors,” Mohammad Javad Zarif told the Munich Security Conference, accusing Israel of “mass reprisals against its neighbors and daily incursions into Syria, Lebanon.”
“Once the Syrians have the guts to down one of its planes it’s as if a disaster has happened,” Zarif said.
He was responding to Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the conference hours before, in which the Israeli prime minister, holding a piece of what he said was an Iranian drone, accused Iran of trying to impose an “empire” across the Middle East.
“What has happened in the past several days is the so-called invincibility (of Israel) has crumbled,” Zarif said of Netanyahu’s remarks, which followed the Feb. 10 downing of an Israeli F-16 jet.
‘Cartoonish circus’
Zarif also slammed Netanyahu for staging the “cartoonish circus” by showing the fragment at the event.
“You were the audience for a cartoonish circus just this morning which does not even deserve the dignity of a response,” the Iranian foreign minister said. He said Israel was trying “to create these cartoonish images to blame others for its own strategic blunders, or maybe to evade the domestic crisis they’re facing.”
David Ivry, a former Israeli Air Force chief, said earlier this month he believed it was the first time an Israeli F-16 was brought down since Israel began using the jets in the 1980s.
Anti-aircraft fire downed the jet as it was returning from a bombing raid on military positions in Syria.
It was one of at least eight Israeli planes dispatched in response to what Israel said was an Iranian drone’s incursion into its airspace earlier on that day.
The jet was hit by a Syrian antiaircraft missile and crashed in northern Israel, according to an Israeli official.
‘Delusional thinking’
In his speech, Zarif repeatedly called Netanyahu “obsessive” in his focus on Iran as a threat to Israel’s security and branded his assertion that Tehran would “do nothing” if the US pulled out of the landmark 2015 nuclear deal as “delusional thinking.”
An opponent of the deal, Netanyahu said on Sunday that if the US refuses to keep approving the deal “I think they’ll do nothing.”
Zarif said, “I can assure that if Iran’s interests are not secured, Iran will respond, will respond seriously, and I believe it would be a response that means people would be sorry for taking the erroneous action they did.”
Zarif repeated, “We will not be the first ones to violate” the agreement.
Reuters, AP and AFP contributed to this story.