The Israeli strikes are “much ado about nothing,” Ali Akbar Velayati said in an interview with the Financial Times, which was published on Monday, two days after Israel attacked some military facilities in Iran.

Noting that Iran has never initiated any war, Velayati warned that it is Israel that is fueling regional instability.

“In its role as a warmongering entity, the regime has the potential to set the volatile West Asia region on fire, and to create the spark that would set the regional powder keg alight,” he said.

“We have never started any wars, as attested by history, and the Iran-Iraq war served as a vivid example of that policy. Still, we would confront an act of aggression in a way that would make any aggressor regret what they did,” Velayati noted.

In the early hours of Saturday, Israeli warplanes used US-controlled airspace over Iraq to fire projectiles at military installations in Iran’s Tehran, Khuzestan, and Ilam provinces in flagrant breach of the country’s national sovereignty.

Iran said that the strike was “successfully” intercepted and countered by the country’s air defense system and that it caused limited damage to radar sites. Five people, including four Army officers and a civilian, were killed in the assault.
Referring to US hypocrisy when it comes to Israel, Velayati said, “The US’s direct, unconditional support for Israel and its simultaneous calls for de-escalation through intermediaries are simply two sides of the same coin.”

Since early October 2023, Israel has been waging brutal two-front aggression that has killed more than 43,000 people in the Gaza Strip and at least 2,700 others in Lebanon so far.

Over the same period, the usurping regime has also assassinated several resistance leaders, including Hamas’s political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.

‘Cooperation with West based on mutual respect’

Speaking on Iran’s distrust in the United States after it quit the 2015 nuclear deal, and on talks meant to revive the agreement, Velayati said, “What [US President Joe] Biden says quietly, [Donald] Trump says openly. We have experience in dealing with both and do not have a good history of negotiations with the US.”

“We don’t believe in US goodwill,” Velayati said, but expressed Iran’s readiness to cooperate with Western states that favor interaction with Iran based on mutual respect.

“The Islamic Republic is open to co-operation with any Western state that seeks genuine interaction with Iran, provided it respects Iran’s sovereignty and treats us as an equal,” he said.

“We are actively redefining a new balance in relations with Western, Eastern and developing countries. We welcome friendship with any country, from Europe to Asia or Africa.”

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, who won the election held last summer, has said that the Islamic Republic is seeking to expand its ties with the world’s countries based on mutual respect, but stressed that the country doesn’t accept bullying.

MNA/