2023-12-23 17:58:43
The deputy to the Coordination Command of the Revolutionary Guards of Iran, General Mohamad Reza Naqdi, warned this Saturday of the possible “closure of the Mediterranean Sea and the Strait of Gibraltar” in the midst of the initiative championed by the United States in the Red Sea against the attacks of the Houthi insurgency in Yemen, similar to Tehran, on navigation in the area.
The Houthis have been launching drone attacks against these ships for weeks as a gesture of support for the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in its war against Israel. “This is not just rhetoric,” the Iranian commander said in statements reported by the semi-official Mehr agency. “They had better wait for the closure of the Mediterranean Sea, Gibraltar and other navigable waterways,” he added. “Yesterday, the Persian Gulf and (the Strait of Hormuz) became a nightmare for them. Today, they are trapped in the Red Sea,” he said.
The United States Department of Defense assured yesterday that more than 20 countries have committed to participate in Operation ‘Guardian of Prosperity’, led by the United States and whose stated objective is to guarantee navigation safety in the Red Sea. due to these attacks. The Houthis, backed by Iran and who have controlled Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, and other areas in the north and west of the country since 2014, have assured that they will continue their attacks against Israeli-flagged ships, owned by Israeli companies or going to ports. Israelis, despite the creation of this new multinational mission, and have reiterated that ships without ties to Israel and that do not go to its ports “will not be threatened.”
On the other hand, the president of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, and his Egyptian counterpart, Abdel Fattá al Sisi, held this Saturday the first telephone conversation in years between heads of state of both countries, whose bilateral relations have not been normalized since the Revolution. Islamic 1979. The war in Gaza has been the dominant topic in a conversation that occurs on a day that Tehran hosts a conference on Palestine with the presence of senior government officials, intellectuals and personalities from more than 50 countries, according to the Iranian media. “President Raisi has assured that Iran will use all its capabilities to stop the genocide of the Zionist regime (Israel) and provide aid to the oppressed but powerful Palestinians of Gaza,” according to a statement carried by the official IRNA news agency. “We hope that Egypt,” he added, “will use its resources to help stop the attacks, provide aid, and respond to the rights of the Palestinian people.”
Meanwhile, and in a speech this Saturday, the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has redoubled his verbal attacks against Israel. “Let no one doubt that the usurper Zionist regime will be eradicated from the earth,” he assured visitors to the province of Khuzestan in a proclamation about the war in Gaza. In his comments, Khamenei highlighted the lack of consensus at the UN on the war and the US veto of ceasefire resolutions. “The great victory of the Palestinian nation is that they discredited the West and the United States and their false claims of human rights,” he said, in comments reported by the semi-official Mehr news agency.
#Iran #threatens #West #closure #Mediterranean #Sea #Strait #Gibraltar