Dubai, March 7: Iran’s president apologised Saturday for attacks on regional countries even as its missiles and drones flew toward Gulf Arab states, indicating that Tehran’s political leadership could not exercise full command over Iran’s armed forces. He also rejected US President Donald Trump’s repeated demands for surrender.
President Masoud Pezeshkian, one member of a tripartite leadership council overseeing Iran since a Feb. 28 airstrike started the war and killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, delivered the defiant message exactly one week into a conflict that has spread across the region, rattled global markets and air travel and left Iran’s own leadership greatly weakened by hundreds of Israeli and American airstrikes.
The message, seemingly filmed in a hurry without professional broadcast equipment, again underlined the limited powers being exercised by theocracy’s leaders over its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which controls the ballistic missiles targeting Israel and others.
It answered only to Khamenei and now appears to be picking its own targets as the conflict widens.
While the Iranian president attempted to assuage growing Gulf Arab anger over the attacks, just hours earlier, a wave of missiles and drones had disrupted flights at Dubai International Airport, targeted a major Saudi oil facility and sent people fleeing for cover multiple times in Bahrain.
Pezeshkian also kept up his criticism of Trump’s call for Iran to unconditionally surrender to America.
“That’s a dream that they should take to their grave,” he said.
Shortly after Pezeshkian’s message, Trump warned in a social media post Saturday that more Iranian officials would become targets in the war, writing: “Today Iran will be hit very hard!” In his comments on his Truth Social website, Trump noted the apology by Pezeshkian.
“Under serious consideration for complete destruction and certain death, because of Iran’s bad behaviour, are areas and groups of people that were not considered for targeting up until this moment in time,” Trump wrote, without elaborating.
Miscommunication among Iran’s ranks
Pezeshkian’s statement on Saturday said Iran’s three-man leadership council had been in touch with the armed forces over the attacks.
“I should apologise to the neighbouring countries that were attacked by Iran, on my own behalf,” the president said.
“From now on, they should not attack neighbouring countries or fire missiles at them, unless we are attacked by those countries. I think we should solve this through diplomacy.”
Gen. Abolfazl Shekarchi, Iran’s armed forces spokesman, then added more confusion by saying after Pezeshkian that Tehran has “not hit countries that did not provide space for America to invade our country.”
The American strikes haven’t been coming from the Gulf Arab states, now under attack.
Likely in response to the ongoing political confusion, on Saturday, a prominent cleric in Iran, Ayatollah Nasser Makarem Shirazi, urged the country’s Assembly of Experts to act quickly to name a new supreme leader.
Buildings associated with the 88-cleric panel have been hit by airstrikes in the war, likely slowing any meeting of the group.
“The timely realisation of this important matter will lead to national authority and the best possible organisation of affairs,” Shirazi said in a statement. (AP)
