Rocket fury as Israel, Iran spar
THE WHITE HOUSE on Thursday voiced support for Israel and condemned Iran’s “provocative rocket attacks from Syria against Israeli citizens” as a “highly dangerous development.”
Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders expressed the administration’s feelings after a night of military confrontation between the two bitter enemies.
Tensions in the region have ramped up this week following President Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. out of a multinational nuclear agreement with Tehran.
Israel said earlier Thursday that it attacked the majority of Iran’s military installations in neighboring Syria following a barrage of rockets on Israeli installations in the occupied Golan Heights.
“The Iranian regime’s deployment into Syria of offensive rocket and missile systems aimed at Israel is an unacceptable and highly dangerous development for the entire Middle East,” Sanders said.
Iran’s supreme leader, meanwhile, claimed Trump recently sent a letter to U.S.-allied Arab countries, demanding they do as he commands.
“In the letter, he says, ‘I have spent $7 trillion on you, you have to do (what I say),’ ” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said during an event at Farhanigan University in Tehran.
“You spent this money to rule Iraq and Syria,” the ayatollah said the letter continued. “You couldn’t. To hell with it.”
A White House spokesman declined to comment on the letter’s veracity, but a senior administration official confirmed to the Washington Post that Trump recently sent a letter to Persian Gulf Arab allies such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Wednesday’s overnight fighting were the most intensive actions taken by Israel in Syria since the country’s deadly civil war began in 2011.
Britain also condemned the suspected Iranian attacks “in the strongest terms.”
Russia, which has remained an ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad throughout the country’s conflict, urged both Israel and Iran to avoid provoking each other.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow sees Thursday’s strikes as a “very alarming development.”
He noted that in contacts with the leadership of both countries, including a meeting Wednesday between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “we underlined the necessity of avoiding any actions that might be mutually provocative.”
Netanyahu said the firefight sent a “clear message” to Assad not to attack Israel.
He warned “whoever attacks us — we will attack them sevenfold and whoever prepares to attack us — we will act against them first.”