Iran’s foreign minister on Friday refused to acknowledge that Israel was behind the recent attack on his country and described the weapons used as children’s toys.
“What happened last night was not a strike,” Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said in an interview with NBC News’ Tom Llamas. “They were more like toys that our children play with – not drones.”
Amirabdollahian, who spoke to NBC News in New York where he was attending a United Nations Security Council session, said Iran has no intention of responding unless Israel launches a significant attack.
“As long as there is no new adventurism on the part of Israel against our interests, we will not have new reactions,” he said.
But the foreign minister warned that if Israel attacked Iran, the response would be swift and severe.
“If Israel takes decisive action against my country and this is demonstrated to us,” he said, “our response will be immediate and maximum and will make them repent.”
The recent cycle of violence between Israel and Iran began on April 1 when Israel bombed an Iranian consular building in the Syrian capital of Damascus, killing two generals and five Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps officers.
Iran responded 12 days later, launching an unprecedented direct military attack on Israel involving more than 300 missiles and drones. However, the attack did not cause significant damage. Nearly all missiles and drones were intercepted by Israeli, US and other allied forces.
Amirabdollahian said the attack was meant to be “a warning.” “We could have hit Haifa and Tel Aviv,” he told her. “We could have also targeted all of Israel’s economic ports.”
“But our red line was with civilians,” he added. “We only had a military purpose.”
Although Israel has been locked in a shadow war with Israel for decades, with Iran arming and training proxy forces hostile to Israel in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and the Palestinian enclave of Gaza, the Iranian air barrage marked the first time Tehran staged an overt military attack against Israel.
In the days that followed, the Biden administration urged Israel to show restraint and not conduct a retaliatory attack that could spark a full-blown war between the two longtime adversaries.
Israel, however, retaliated Thursday evening, striking a military airfield near the central Iranian city of Isfahan. According to Iranian state media, nuclear facilities in the area were not damaged and there were no reports of casualties.
The attack was downplayed by Iranian state media and met with silence from Israeli officials. The limited scope of the strike and the lack of public statements afterward appear to indicate that both sides are trying to ease tensions, experts said.
American officials called for calm. “We don’t want to see this conflict escalate,” White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said Friday.
The Biden administration has accused Iran of being “complicit” in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, citing Tehran’s years-long efforts to arm and train Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.
Iran touts its support for Hamas, but the government has said it neither ordered nor coordinated the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which killed about 1,200 people.
In his interview, Amirabdollahian said Iran was unaware of the Hamas attack. He also stated that Hamas is not a terrorist organization but a liberation movement opposed to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land.
He called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanhayu “appalled” and blamed the Israeli government for the stalled hostage negotiations. He accused Israel of making excessive demands to compensate for its failure to achieve its goals in the war on Gaza.
“He wasn’t able to destroy Hamas or arrest the leaders inside Gaza, he wasn’t able to disarm Hamas, he wasn’t able to destroy the weapons and equipment,” Amirabdollahian said.
“Therefore the killing of women and children had to be resorted to,” he added, “and now at the negotiating table, they are trying to achieve what they failed to achieve on the ground.”
However, the Foreign Minister hopes that an agreement on the release of the hostages will be reached soon as part of a broad solution. Hamas is “ready to proceed with the release of prisoners in the form of an all-encompassing humanitarian political package.”
“I think now is a good time,” he said. “There’s a good chance for that.”