Iran’s military warned that it would continue to target US forces across the Middle East, hours after the Islamic republic’s president said Tehran would halt attacks on Gulf states, which are home to American bases.
In a recorded video aired on state television on Saturday, President Masoud Pezeshkian apologised for the assaults on Iran’s Arab neighbours, saying “there will be no further attacks or missile launches towards neighbouring countries”.
However, he warned that Arab states would be targeted if they allowed the US to use their territory or airspace to launch strikes against the republic.
He also rejected US President Donald Trump’s demand to surrender, saying: “They will carry the wish of our unconditional surrender to their graves.”
Shortly after he spoke, Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, the republic’s military command centre, said the armed forces would continue to target American and Israeli bases across the region.
“Following the remarks of the president, the armed forces once again declare that they respect the national sovereignty of neighbouring states,” it said.
But it added, “should the previous hostile actions continue, all military bases and interests” of the US and Israel “on land, sea, and in air” across the region will be Iran’s “primary targets”.
The attacks on the Gulf continued early on Saturday with missiles and drones launched at Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
Abolfazl Shekarchi, a spokesperson for Iran’s armed forces, said that the enemy would be considered a “legitimate target . . . wherever their attacks originate”.
He added that any country providing airspace, land or facilities would also be considered a target. All the Gulf states host US bases.
Trump took credit for Pezeshkian’s apology and claimed the remarks were a “surrender”. He added that Iran would “completely collapse” as he vowed that the country would be hit hard on Saturday.
The Iranian president, considered a moderate in the ruling establishment, is ostensibly leading the republic as the head of a three-man interim leadership council until a new supreme leader is appointed. It was established after the US and Israel killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior officials in strikes on the supreme leader’s compound in Tehran a week ago.
Iran’s attacks have pushed oil prices above $90 and severely disrupted air travel throughout the region, as the Islamic regime has unleashed hundreds of missiles and drones across the Gulf in a bid to spread the conflict throughout the region and raise the stakes for the US.
Iranian analysts said Pezeshkian’s statement may suggest that Tehran wanted to persuade its neighbours not to join the war or allow Americans to use their territory to attack the republic.
But they added it did not signal Tehran was seeking a ceasefire.
Before the conflict, Gulf states, which had pushed Trump to pursue diplomacy with Iran and not war, had said that they would not allow Washington to use bases in their countries or their airspace to strike Iran.
But after a week of Iranian attacks, analysts said that some Gulf leaders, who were desperate to avoid getting sucked into the conflict, could reconsider their options, such as allowing the US to use their air space. That, however, would risk a greater retaliation with Iran.
Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi this week suggested the military response was deliberately decentralised as part of a prewar plan overseen by Khamenei to enable the republic to maintain its retaliation.
“Our military units are now, in fact, independent and somewhat isolated, and they are acting based on general instructions given to them in advance,” he told Al Jazeera television.
He said that a strike on Oman, which had good relations with the republic and was mediating between the US and Tehran before the war, “was not our choice”.
Araghchi also told Qatar — which also traditionally had good relations with Tehran and has mediated between it and the US — that strikes on that state were aimed at American facilities.
But Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani “categorically rejected” those claims, citing civilian and residential areas that had been hit.
Most of Iran’s projectiles have been intercepted, but the attacks have severely disrupted air travel in the region and underscored the oil-rich Gulf’s vulnerability to Tehran’s aggression.
The attacks have also caused maritime trade through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway through which about a fifth of the world’s oil and gas flows, to slow to a halt.
Saudi Arabia intercepted 21 drones on Saturday morning in the Empty Quarter desert that were launched towards the Shaybah oilfield, the kingdom’s defence ministry said.
The attack on the Shaybah field, which produces 1mn barrels of oil a day, marks the first attempt to strike at the heart of the kingdom’s energy production.
Dubai authorities said falling debris caused by an intercepted strike on Saturday morning had been “contained” following reports of booms and smoke near the city’s main international airport.
Dubai’s Emirates airline plans to restart operations to all of its regular destinations in the coming days.
Qatar Airways said it would begin some relief flights after its airspace was reopened for the first time in a week.
Additional reporting by Simeon Kerr in Dubai and Ahmed Al Omran in Jeddah
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