Israel to retaliate against Iran: Cameron
US and allies hope new sanctions on Iran will limit Israeli retaliation
Jerusalem/Cairo
Israel has clearly decided to retaliate against Iran for missile and drone attacks, Britain’s foreign minister David Cameron said during a visit to Israel on Wednesday, the starkest warning yet of another volley coming in regional escalation.
World powers are striving to prevent a wider outbreak of conflict in West Asia after Iran’s attacks on Saturday night, the first time Iran has directly attacked Israel after decades of confrontation by proxies.
DIPLOMATIC BALANCING
Iran launched the attacks in response to a presumed Israeli airstrike on its embassy compound in Damascus on April 1, which killed two generals and several other Iranian o cers.
More than six months into a war between Israel and the Iran-backed Palestinian militant group Hamas that has seen flare-ups in violence across West Asia, diplomats are searching for a way to avert direct battle between Israel and Iran.
The Iranian missiles and drones launched on Saturday were mostly shot down by Israel and its allies, and caused no deaths and only minor damage. But Israel says it must retaliate to preserve the credibility of its deterrents. Iran says it considers the matter closed for now but will retaliate again if Israel does.
“It’s clear the Israelis are making a decision to act,” Cameron told media early in his visit to Jerusalem. “We hope they do so in a way that does as little to escalate this as possible.”
Cameron said Britain wanted to see coordinated sanctions against Iran by the Group of Seven big democracies, which are meeting this week in Italy. “They need to be given a clear unequivocal message by the G7,” he said.
Israel is expected to discuss its response to Iran at a meeting of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet. Washington is planning to impose new sanctions targeting Iran’s missile and drone programme in the coming days and expects its allies will be following suit, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said in a statement on Tuesday. Earlier, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the US would use sanctions, and work with allies, to keep disrupting Iran’s “malign and destabilising activity”.