Israel wants to drag the Middle East into a full-blown war by provoking Iran to join the nearly year-old conflict between Israel and Tehran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran’s president said on Monday, warning of its “irreversible” consequences.
Masoud Pezeshkian, speaking to a group of journalists after his arrival in New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly, said: “We do not wish to be the cause of instability in the Middle East as its consequences would be irreversible”.
“We want to live in peace, we don’t want war,” he added. “It is Israel that seeks to create this all-out conflict.”
Pezeshkian, a relatively moderate politician who was elected in July promising a pragmatic foreign policy, accused the international community of silence in the face of what he called “Israel’s genocide” in Gaza.
