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Iranian lawmaker says
his country doesn’t
want war with US
By NASSER KARIMI Associated Press
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran will “under no circumstances” enter a war either di- rectly or indirectly with the United States, a prominent reformist Iranian lawmaker said Wednesday, as both Washington and Tehran try to ease heightened tensions in the region.
The reported comments by Heshmatol- lah Falahatpisheh come after the White House earlier this month sent an aircraft carrier and B-52 bombers to the region over a still-unexplained threat it perceived from Iran.
Since that development, Iran has announced it will back away from the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers,
an accord that President Donald Trump pulled America out of a year ago. The United Arab Emirates, meanwhile, alleged that four oil tankers were sabotaged off its coast, and Iranian-allied rebels in Yemen have launched drone attacks into Saudi Arabia.
Falahatpisheh’s comments, reported by the semi-official ILNA news agency, carry additional heft as he serves as the chair- man of the Iranian parliament’s national security and foreign policy commission.
“Under no circumstance will we enter
a war,” Falahatpisheh said, according to ILNA. “No group can announce that it has entered a proxy war from Iran’s side.”
Since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, Tehran has worked to leverage relation- ships with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, Hamas in the Gaza Strip and others to counter what it perceives as the threat from America’s vast military pres- ence across the Mideast. Analysts believe that if attacked, Iran could rely on those militant groups to target American troops,
Israel and other U.S. allies in the region. On Monday, Iran announced it had quadrupled its production capacity of
low-enriched uranium. Iranian officials made a point to stress that the uranium would be enriched only to the 3.67% limit set under the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, making it usable for a power plant but far below what’s needed for an atomic weapon.
But by increasing production, Iran soon will exceed the stockpile limitations set by the nuclear accord. Tehran has set a July 7 deadline for Europe to set new terms for the deal, or it will enrich closer to weap- ons-grade levels in a Mideast already on
edge.
The U.S. Air Force announced Wednes-
day that a B-52 bomber deployed to Amer- ica’s vast Al-Udeid Air Base over the ten- sions took part in a formation flight with Qatari fighter jets. That come as Qatar has grown closer to Iran after facing a nearly two-year boycott by four Arab nations also allied with the U.S.
“This flight was conducted to continue building military-to-military relationships” with Qatar, the Air Force said.
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Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.
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