GENEVA: The United States made a \u201ctotally stupid decision\u201d to attack Iran while in negotiations, and betrayed Gulf nations by trashing their diplomatic efforts, Tehran\u2019s UN ambassador said Tuesday.
\nAli Bahreini, Iran\u2019s ambassador in Geneva, insisted Tehran had no problem with its neighbors, but could not let US bases in the Gulf be used as launchpads for attacks on Iran.
\n\u201cWar was not our option. War was imposed on Iran,\u201d Bahreini told UN correspondents.
\n\u201cNobody should expect Iran to show restraint in front of aggression.
\n\u201cWe will continue our defense until the point that this aggression is stopped,\u201d he said.
\nOn February 26, Washington and Tehran held indirect negotiations in Geneva on Iran\u2019s nuclear program \u2014 with the Omani mediators reporting \u201csignificant progress.\u201d
\nBahreini was present for part of those talks and said \u201ceverybody was optimistic\u201d and the US team \u201cagreed to continue negotiations\u201d in Vienna this week.
\nBut Bahreini said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had convinced US President Donald Trump to destroy diplomacy and attack Iran, with strikes starting on Saturday.
\n\u201cIt was a totally stupid decision. They will know in the future how stupid this decision has been. Both of them will understand, because Iran will firmly determine the situation and the destiny of this war,\u201d he said.
\n\u201cAll our neighbors are now disappointed with the betrayal of the United States because everybody was working for diplomacy, particularly Oman.
\n\u201cThe US betrayed everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n
– \u2018Not a regional war\u2019 –<\/p>\n
Tehran has launched strikes against countries in the region that host US bases.
\n\u201cI cannot accept labelling what we are doing as reprisal. What we are doing is a kind of self-defense,\u201d said Bahreini.
\nThe ambassador said Iran\u2019s problem was not with its neighbors, describing the Gulf countries as friends.
\n\u201cWe are in daily dialogue with our neighbors to convey to them the message that this war is not a war against our neighbors.
\n\u201cThis is not a regional war.
\n\u201cBut we cannot ignore the fact that the US bases in their lands are operational against us.
\n\u201cIn no way we can allow those bases to be used to make military operations against Iran.\u201d
\nHe said Iran\u2019s operations were \u201cexclusively\u201d against US military targets, and said \u201cthere has been very serious order given to our military forces not to make any harm to civilians.\u201d
\nTrump claimed Tuesday that the Iranian leadership \u201cwant to talk\u201d but Bahreini insisted no approach had been made to Washington, saying \u201cthere hasn\u2019t been any contact from our side\u201d since the war erupted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
GENEVA: The United States made a \u201ctotally stupid decision\u201d to attack Iran while in negotiations, and betrayed Gulf nations by trashing their diplomatic efforts, Tehran\u2019s UN ambassador said Tuesday. Ali Bahreini, Iran\u2019s ambassador in Geneva, insisted Tehran had no problem with its neighbors, but could not let US bases in the Gulf be used as …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":94571,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94564"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94572,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94564\/revisions\/94572"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}