Iran is downplaying the Israeli military’s Friday morning strike near a major air base and nuclear site, which came in response to Tehran’s attack last weekend, when the rogue nation launched about 170 drones, 120 ballistic missiles, and 30 cruise missiles against Israel.
“What happened last night wasn’t a strike,” Iran’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Hossein Amir-Abdollahian told NBC News’s “Top Story with Tom Llamas,” according to a translation. He mocked the drones as “more like toys that children play with" and said Iran was able to down them quickly.
Iranian FM Amirabdollahian: "What happened last night was not a strike. They were more like toys that our children play with – not drones." pic.twitter.com/myFUI6HTJ2
— Clash Report (@clashreport) April 20, 2024
He said Iran would not be responding unless Israel launches a major strike.
"As long as there is no new adventurism by Israel against our interests, then we are not going to have any new reactions," he said. "If Israel takes a decisive action against my country and this is proven to us…our response will be immediate and to the maximum and will cause them to regret it."
Amirabdollahian said Tehran's barrage of missile and drone strikes was meant to serve as a "warning" to Israel.
"We could have hit Haifa and Tel Aviv," he said. "We could have also targeted all the economic ports of Israel...but our red lines was civilians."
"We only had a military purpose, he added.
Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian refused to acknowledge that Israel was behind Friday's attack and said Iran is not planning to escalate.
— NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (@NBCNightlyNews) April 19, 2024
@llamasnbc spoke with Amirabdollahian, who was in New York attending a U.N. Security Council session. pic.twitter.com/CxtjFDDfEH
The latest back-and-forth between the two nations came after Israel hit an Iranian consular building in Damascus, Syria, at the beginning of the month, killing several Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps officers and two generals.