A top Iranian official warned the US against a ground invasion, saying its troops would be set “on fire”, as regional diplomats met on Sunday in Pakistan in hopes of opening direct US-Iran talks and ending the monthlong war.
Iran’s parliament Speaker, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, said Iranian forces were “waiting for the arrival of American troops on the ground to set them on fire and punish their regional partners forever”, according to Iranian state media. He also dismissed the talks as a cover after some 2,500 US Marines trained in amphibious landings arrived in West Asia.
The war has threatened global supplies of oil, natural gas and fertiliser and disrupted air travel. Iran’s grip on the strategic Strait of Hormuz has shaken markets and prices, and now the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels’ entry into the war could threaten shipping on another crucial waterway, the Bab el-Mandeb strait to the Red Sea.
“We don’t know at what moment our homes could be targeted,” said Razzak Saghir al-Mousawi, 71, describing relentless airstrikes as Iranians crossing into Iraq urged the US to end the war. “I am definitely afraid.”
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei has thanked the Iraqi people and religious leadership for their support of Iran “in the face of aggression”, Iran’s state media reported
on Sunday, without saying how this message was conveyed.
Pakistan said the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt met in Islamabad without US or Israeli participation, days after the US offered Iran a 15-point “action list” as a framework for a possible peace deal. The ministers are expected to meet again on Monday.
Pakistan’s foreign minister said later on Sunday that Islamabad would soon host talks between the US and Iran. Ishaq Dar did not specify whether the talks would be direct or indirect. There was no immediate word from the US or Iran.
Egypt’s Badr Abdelatty said the meetings were aimed at opening a “direct dialogue” between the US and Iran, which have largely communicated through mediators. Both this war and last year’s 12-day war began during rounds of indirect talks.
Iranian officials have rejected the US framework and publicly dismissed the idea of negotiating under pressure.
An adviser to the United Arab Emirates, Anwar Gargash, called for any settlement to the war to include “clear guarantees” that Iranian attacks on neighbours will not be repeated.
Gargash said Iran’s government had become “the main threat” to Persian Gulf security and called for compensation for attacks on civilian infrastructure.
Iran on Sunday warned of escalation after Israeli airstrikes hit several universities, including ones that Israel claimed were used for nuclear research and development. Concerns over Iran’s nuclear programme are at the heart of tensions.
The paramilitary Revolutionary Guard warned that Iran would consider Israeli universities and branches of US universities in the region “legitimate targets” unless offered safety assurances for Iranian universities, state media reported.
US colleges have campuses in Qatar and the UAE, including Georgetown, New York and Northwestern universities.
“If the US government wants its universities in the region spared, it should condemn the bombardment” of Iranian universities by midday Monday, the Guard said in a statement.
Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei said Saturday that dozens of universities and research centres had been hit, among them the Iran University of Science and Technology and Isfahan University of Technology.
Both sides in the war have threatened to attack civilian facilities, which critics have warned could be a war crime.
Journalists’ funeral
Crowds of mourners gathered in Beirut on Sunday for the funeral of three Lebanese journalists killed in an Israeli airstrike. They were Ali Choeib, a well-known television presenter for the Hezbollah-owned Al Manar channel; Fatima Ftouni, who worked for Al-Mayadeen, another channel close to Hezbollah; and her brother, Mohammad Ftouni, also a journalist. The Israeli military said Choeib was a member of Hezbollah’s armed wing. It declined to comment on the killing of the other two journalists.
Lebanon assault
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday he had instructed the military to further expand the existing security buffer zone in southern Lebanon, vowing to fundamentally change the security situation there.
“I have just instructed to further expand the existing security buffer zone. We are determined to fundamentally change the situation in the north,” Netanyahu said in a video statement from the Northern Command.
He said the decision aimed to strengthen Israel’s security posture along the northern frontier, amid ongoing tensions along Israel’s northern border, where cross-border hostilities have raised fears of a broader regional escalation.
Israel fire
Israeli search and rescue teams were working to extinguish a fire at a large industrial park in southern Israel, after fragments from missile interceptions landed on the site, the Israeli military said in a statement. The site, Neot Hovav, houses a large hazardous waste disposal facility. It was not immediately clear whether the impact directly damaged sites that contained hazardous waste, but the military said individuals around the site were instructed to remain indoors due to a possible leak.
Jerusalem block
The Israeli police on Sunday prevented two of the most senior Christian representatives in Jerusalem from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City, where they had planned to celebrate Palm Sunday Mass in a small, private ceremony. All holy sites in the Old City have been officially closed to the public since the
war began a month ago. The officials said in a statement that they had planned to broadcast the celebrations to millions of Christians worldwide, describing the police action as “a grave precedent” and “a manifestly unreasonable and grossly disproportionate measure”.
AP and New York Times News Service