Iran seeks int’l backing, threatens Israel as region braced for strike

Tehran has sought international support against Israel as the region remains braced for an IDF retaliatory strike on Iran, while the US issued sanctions against the Islamic Republic’s energy trade.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi “underscored the need for collective diplomatic efforts to halt the Zionist regime’s aggressions and crimes,” he wrote in a letter to his counterparts across the globe, his office said in a post on X.

Iran’s ballistic missile strike against Israel earlier this month was justified, he said. The “Islamic Republic of Iran is fully prepared to take stronger defensive actions, if necessary, in response to any further aggression, and will not hesitate to do so,” he stressed.

Araghchi spoke as Israel has remained tight-lipped about the details and the timing of that strike. The security cabinet met Thursday night to discuss the matter, but no decisions were taken.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant spoke with US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin after the meeting.

Awaiting the US's verdict

Gallant had been expected to travel to Washington last week to meet with Austin, but his trip was scuttled by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. On Wednesday, Netanyahu spoke with US President Joe Biden, which included discussing Israel’s potential retaliatory strike.

The US has opposed any IDF strike on Iranian nuclear facilities or oil fields.

The Pentagon said Austin “made clear that the United States is well postured to defend US personnel, partners, and allies against attacks from Iran and Iranian-backed partners and proxies.”

Washington on Friday expanded sanctions against Iran’s petroleum and petrochemical sectors in response to its missile attack on Israel, the Treasury Department said.

“This action intensifies financial pressure on Iran, limiting the regime’s ability to earn critical energy revenues to undermine stability in the region and attack US partners and allies,” it said in a statement.

The Treasury adds the petroleum and petrochemical sector to an existing executive order that targets key sectors of Iran’s economy, with the aim of denying the government financial resources to support its nuclear and missile program.

The department is also designating 16 entities and identifying 17 vessels as blocked property, citing their involvement in shipments of Iranian petroleum and petrochemical products in support of the National Iranian Oil Company, according to the statement.

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said that other countries would soon announce similar sanctions.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin touted expanded ties with Tehran as he met his Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian on Friday.

“We actively work together in the international arena, and our assessments of current events in the world are often very close,” Putin told Pezeshkian, according to the TASS News Agency, as the two men met in the Turkmen capital of Ashgabat.

Pezeshkian, according to IRNA, noted that Iran and Russia had significant complementary capacities and could assist each other. “Our positions in the world are much closer to each other than to others,” he was quoted as telling the Russian leader.

Putin was cited by TASS as telling Pezeshkian that economic ties between Moscow and Tehran were on the up. The Islamic Republic has deepened its cooperation with Moscow since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine two years ago, particularly with respect to military weapons such as ballistic missiles and armed drones.

The European Union plans to designate individuals or organizations for sanctions over the Iranian transfer of ballistic missiles to Russia, a high-ranking EU official said on Friday. He did not immediately provide further details.

Earlier in the day, Pezeshkian said that Israel should “stop killing innocent people,” and its actions in the Middle East were backed by the US and EU. Russia has also criticized Israel, which says it is protecting its own security, for bombing civilian areas.

Amir-Saeed Iravan, Ambassador to the United Nations in New York, told the UN Security Council on Thursday afternoon that Israel is “now a serious threat to international peace and security; its ongoing aggressive acts of terror and atrocities now threaten to plunge the entire region into all-out war.”

In Laos on Friday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Iran posed a global threat. The “so-called axis of resistance led by Iran looks to create other fronts in different places. We’re working very hard through deterrence and through diplomacy to prevent that from happening.”

Israel, for the last year, has been battling Iran and its proxies in a multi-front war whose primary focus has been Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen. Tehran has twice directly attacked Israel, once in April and again last week.

The IDF-Hezbollah conflict has escalated in the last month, with Israel assassinating the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and other top commanders. IDF troops also entered southern Lebanon to push the terrorist group back from the border.

Iranian Parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf made a solidarity visit to Beirut on Saturday to underscore his support for Hezbollah and the Lebanese people in their battle against Israel.

Reuters and Maariv contributed to this report.