‘The war with Israel has already started,’ says Iranian official

Comments come in wake of provocative military exercise near Iran-Azerbaijan border.

By World Israel News staff

“The war with Israel has already started,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Saeed Khatibzadeh told Israel’s Maariv newspaper on Thursday. The Iranian was in Normandy where he also addressed the World Peace Forum.

“Israel has carried out attacks that were intended to destroy our nuclear program for peaceful purposes. It murdered nuclear scientists and harmed the Iranian people. Iran is accused of terrorism, but there is no good or bad terrorist. The whole crisis in the region is Israel’s fault,” Khatibzadeh said to Maariv.

The spokesman also accused Israel of doing everything it could to foil a nuclear agreement between Iran and the West while claiming the U.S. was deliberately withholding from Iran needed medicines.

Asked if a nuclear agreement would prevent Israel from launching an attack, Khatibzadeh said, “Israel has severely damaged our research and civilian system. There is talk of an Iranian nuclear threat, but Israel has hundreds of bombs, and it has never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty.”

Iran recently held a provocative military exercise near its 430-mile border with Azerbaijan due to what Tehran called a “Zionist presence” there.

In his remarks to the Forum, however, Khatibzadeh, said that “the region is tired of wars. We must find a new approach to solving the problems according to UN resolutions. All parties must show political will for an arrangement.”

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