Israel Will Face Painful Fate” – Iran Supreme Leader, Khamenei, Vows After Deadly Israeli Strikes
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has vowed “severe punishment” for an Israeli attack that he called a crime.
“The evil and bloody hand of the Zionist regime committed a crime in our beloved country at dawn today, once again revealing its wicked nature by targeting residential areas. This regime must await severe punishment,” he said in a statement hours after Israeli strikes.
“By God’s will, the powerful arm of the Islamic Republic’s armed forces will not let it go unpunished,” he said.
“In the enemy’s attacks, a number of commanders and scientists were martyred. Their successors and colleagues will immediately continue their duties, God willing,” he said. “With this crime, the Zionist regime has brought a bitter and painful fate upon itself, and it will certainly face it.”
Israel, this morning, targeted the nuclear facilities of Iran which had been a subject of intense disagreement between the Islamist state of Iran, Israel and America as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, based in Vienna, Austria.
While America, during the first administration of Donald Trump, dumped the nuclear programme accord between Iran and the IAEA, Israel has repeatedly said that only a military strike dismantling the programme would suffice, quite unlike America which favours a negotiated diplomatic deal.
The IAEA , which earlier in the week had accused Iran of being opaque about its nuclear enhancement programme, has threatened to report it to the United Nations Security Council which has the right to impose sanctions under international law.
On his part, American President, Trump, had said, in the light of the IAEA allegation, that Iran had to do ” hard negotiations,” which he did not elaborate on.
Trump also said that though he had tried to dissuade Israel from a military strike on Iran ‘ s nuclear facility, he was offering no guarantees that the Jewish state would show restraint.
This morning ‘s strike was a dire confirmation of Trump’s diplomatic hint at an imminent Israeli strike.
Israel has struck Iran multiple times in the past regarding its nuclear programme but Teheran has not given up on its programme, or the enrichment of its Uranium to reach weapon-grade status.
In fact, in the face of the report of the IAEA and its threat of sanctions, Iran vowed to sustain its Uranium enrichment programme.
The issue of the nuclear programme of Iran has split the global diplomatic community, with Western elements of it vehemently opposed to it, while the global South and the Non- Western interests appear disinterested.
Like the rest of the West, the opposition of Israel to the nuclear programme of Iran is largely pegged on its fear of it becoming a competitive military power in the strategic Middle East, and the alleged alliance between the state of Iran and Anti- Israeli military groups such as Hezbollah of Lebanon, and Hamas officials Palestine.
Both Hezbollah and Hamas, taken together with the Houthis of Yemen, constitute what Israel and its allies, especially America, call the Axis of Evil.
Israel occupies part of Palestine, Lebanon and Syria, against the dictates of international law and the ruling of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands.
Israel, officially , is not an acknowledged nuclear state, even though it has an estimated 360 nuclear war heads.
Officially acknowledged nuclear states are America, which developed its own under the aegis of the Manhattan Project, and became the first country to do a nuclear fusion and the nuclear weapon; Russia, which inherited the stock of the defunct Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, USSR ( Russia has more nuclear weapons than the rest of the world put together); France , which has the highest stock in Europe; Britain, the second nuclear power in Europe after France; China, military leader in Asia; North Korea,the rogue state which built its own with the support of Russia and China,; India and Pakistan.
Diplomatic efforts to restrict the spread of nuclear weapons are held under the aegis of the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and are domiciled under the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) and the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty ( SALT) talks between the two nuclear super power states of America and Russia.
