Cameron in Israel to ask Netanyahu to show restraint over Iran drone strike
LORD Cameron visited Israel today to deliver in person Western appeals for restraint as the country’s war cabinet debates its response to the unprecedented aerial barrage from Iran.
The Foreign Secretary was expected to meet Benjamin Netanyahu after Rishi Sunak told the Israeli prime minister, in a phone call last night, that it was “a moment for calm heads to prevail”.
In the first visit by Western diplomats since Iran’s drone and missile attack on Saturday night, Lord Cameron and German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock held talks in Jerusalem this morning with Israeli president Isaac Herzog.
Nearly all of the aerial threats were shot down, with the help of RAF Typhoon fighters. Lord Cameron said: “It is right to have shown solidarity with Israel.”
Iran says it considers the matter closed after staging the attack in reprisal for an air strike on its embassy compound in Syria two weeks ago.
But Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi, speaking yesterday at an annual military parade, said Tehran would deliver a “massive and harsh” response should Israel stage the “tiniest invasion” of Iranian territory.
Lord Cameron has queried whether Israel was wise to violate diplomatic sanctity with the attack in Damascus. Speaking in Jerusalem, he said: “It is right to have made our views clear about what should happen next, but it is clear the Israelis are making the decision to act.
“We hope they do so in a way that does as little to escalate this as possible and in a way that, as I said yesterday, is smart as well as tough.”
The Foreign Secretary added: “But the real need is to refocus back on Hamas, back on the hostages, back on getting the aid in, back on getting a pause in the conflict in Gaza.”
Iran backs the Hamas terrorists who ignited the latest Middle East conflict in Gaza on October 7, and also the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon. Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon yesterday killed three people including a Hezbollah field commander, as cross-border violence resumed after at least a week of relative calm.
Israel’s response to Iran could be calibrated to hit Iranian proxies such as Hezbollah or the Islamic republic’s interests in the region, military experts believe, but the UK and Western allies fear a more direct response on Iranian soil that could unleash all-out war.
Lord Cameron said that Britain wanted to see coordinated sanctions against Iran. “They need to be given a clear unequivocal message by the G7,” he said, ahead of a meeting of G7 foreign ministers in Capri starting tomorrow. Britain has already sanctioned nearly 200 individuals and entities from Iran including the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, but is resisting calls including from Israel to proscribe the IRGC as a terrorist organisation for fear of the diplomatic fallout.
United States treasury secretary Janet Yellen said yesterday that Washington was looking at more sanctions including “all options to disrupt terrorist financing of Iran”.
The US treasury department wants to erode Iran’s ability to export oil and to procure the microelectronics needed for its drones, which it also sells to Russia for the war in Ukraine.