Washington (ANP/RTR) – Iran said it warned countries in the region and the United States that it would attack Israel on Saturday evening. A senior US government official strongly denied this to Reuters news agency.
Iran's foreign minister said on Sunday that neighboring countries and Israel's ally the United States had been informed of the plans 72 hours in advance. His Turkish counterpart said that his country exchanged messages between Tehran and Washington as a mediator “so that the response to the attacks is proportional.”
A Turkish diplomatic source from the news agency stated that Iran indicated that it would come up with this response to the Israeli attack on the Iranian embassy in Damascus and leave the matter at that. “These developments were not surprising,” the source said.
“I didn't announce anything”
The US government official refutes this. “This is absolutely not true,” the person told Reuters. “They did not announce anything, and they did not say: These are the targets, make sure they are evacuated.” We received a message from Iran via Switzerland when it actually started. I stated that the matter would stop there, but the attack was still continuing at that time, and this is what they informed us of.”
According to the official, Iran said in the letter that the attack would be “extremely destructive,” suggesting that Iran now claims to have issued warnings to explain why the attack ultimately failed to cause the intended devastation.
