DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – Preparing for a retaliatory strike last week Ballistic missile attack, Iran has urged its Arab neighbors not to allow Israel to use their airspace as part of a potential attack, two diplomats from the Gulf states told NBC News on Friday.
Israel has vowed to respond to the attack, and while the nature and timing of the attack remains unclear, Iran has warned that countries that help Israel in any way could be part of a potential war, a diplomat said. Both requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly about sensitive matters.
“The Gulf Cooperation Council is not interested in being caught in the crossfire,” said one diplomat. “Our focus has been on de-escalation.”
US oil bases and facilities in many Arab countries, such as Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, are vital to the global economy, and sentiments expressed by Iran are raising fears in the region that they could be potential targets.
But the second diplomat added that it was unlikely that any Arab country would agree to allow the Israelis to use its airspace to attack Iran.
Both diplomats spoke after intense diplomatic pressure from Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Abbas Araghchi, his foreign minister, to rally support among their Gulf neighbors and persuade them to use their influence in Washington to prevent an Israeli attack.
Araghchi traveled on his Whistlestop tour to Qatar and his country's main regional rival, Saudi Arabia, where he argued with the state's leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Pezheshkian is also expected to meet his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin said Friday on the sidelines of an international forum in Turkmenistan's capital, Ashgabat, to discuss the situation in the Middle East.
Before the meeting, Pezeshkian, who is widely considered a relative moderate, told Russian state television that Israel should “stop killing innocent people” and that its actions in the Middle East are supported by the United States and the European Union.
Israel promised Iran will pay after launching a barrage of around 200 missiles Last week, its military claimed to have shot most of them dead and that there was only one death: Sameh Khadr Hassan al-Assali, 38, a man Palestinian who was stabbed in the occupied territories. West Bank.
Tehran says it is targeting Israel in retaliation for the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrullah. Additionally, an attack in April on the Iranian consulate in the Syrian capital, Damascus, killed two of its generals.
Haniyeh was killed in Tehran while attending Pezeshkian's inauguration in July, when Nasrullah was killed in an Israeli airstrike. His death comes days after several Hezbollah leaders were killed in pager and walkie-talkie explosions, an attack believed to have occurred behind Israel.
Both militant groups are backed by Tehran and Pezeshkian portrayed Iran as “exercising restraint” as it waited two months after Haniyeh's death before launching an attack on Israel.
The timing and nature of Israel's response remains unclear. After talks between President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this week, a readout of a White House call said they “agreed to remain in close contact in the coming days.”
But on Wednesday, Netanyahu's Defense Minister Yoav Galant said Israel's response would be “fatal, specific and above all surprising.”
Although Israel and other countries are encouraging the country to seize the opportunity to launch an ambitious and unprecedented attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, Biden has previously said he would not support such a move.
Brigadier General Rasul Sanai-Rad, Senior Advisor to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, state news agency Fars was quoted as saying on Wednesday that attacking nuclear facilities would “cross regional and global red lines.”
Biden has also warned Israel against attacking Iran's oil facilities, and Gulf states, concerned about attacking their own oil facilities, are lobbying Washington to prevent such a move.
Helping to fuel these fears, Abu al-Askari, military spokesman for Kataib Hezbollah, a powerful Shiite paramilitary group based in Iraq, said in a statement on Telegram that “the world would lose 12 million barrels of oil per day” if the Iran was targeted. He also threatened to “attack American bases, fields and interests” in Iraq and the region.
An Iranian-backed militia was suspected of being behind a drone attack on a US base known as Tower 22 in northeast Jordan that killed and injured three US soldiers. More than 30 others.
However, Matthew Saville, director of military science at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank, said he “wouldn’t be surprised” if Israel “ignored the Syrian and Iraqi protests and carried them forward.” The alternative was “a long way down and up the Red Sea,” he added.
“It’s hard to know how much they are trying to question the Iranians and tie them to the counterintelligence noose,” he said, adding that it was generally assessed that an attack on Iran’s deepest nuclear facilities would require “weapons that only the U.S. “can be dropped by bombers.”
Elsewhere, people are paying the price for Israeli attacks in both Gaza and Lebanon. At least 22 people were killed and 117 injured in attacks in the Lebanese capital Beirut overnight, the country's health ministry said. NBC News reached out to the Israel Defense Forces for comment but did not receive a response.
In Gaza, Palestinian authorities said at least 28 people were killed and dozens injured in an airstrike on a school shelter center in the city of Deir el-Balah. The IDF claims it is being used as a terrorist command center.
