It was two o’clock in the afternoon and in Hamid’s kiosk, in front of one of the frequented metro stations in the center of Tehran, there were only a few copies of two of the more than twenty newspapers that circulate daily in Iran, a magic generated by the subsidies granted by the State. “People want to know what happened and what will happen. There is a lot of uncertainty”, assured this man, who does not remember a sale like yesterday. Nor similar covers. “They have aroused a lot of curiosity”, he added, pointing to the front page of the newspaper Hamshari (neighbor), which showed a large map of the region where Iran and Israel were highlighted in a larger size with arrows pointing the way they were going. take the Iranian drones and missiles, and the points where they hit. “The night when the new Middle East was born”, said the headline.
The newspaper echoed the statements of the commander-in-chief of the Revolutionary Force, General Hussein Salami, who ruled on Sunday that, after the military operation True Promise, Iran would respond directly to any Israeli aggressions in the future. An idea that resonated strongly in Iran yesterday, especially if to this was added the threat that the next time it would attack ten times harder, as was assured by the Supreme National Security Council.
“Iran will respond immediately to the Israeli adventures”, insisted yesterday the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hussein Amir Abdul·lahian, in telephone conversations that he held with counterparts from several countries, in which he also insisted that Iran does not aims to “increase tension in the region”.
“I’m afraid we’ll end up in a war. Do you think Israel will respond?”, asked Shirin, a medical student who had approached another of the kiosks on Enqelab (revolution) Street in Tehran. There still remained a larger variety of newspapers. Many carried large photos and illustrations of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem with various headlines. “A humiliation for the Zionists”, said one newspaper. “Iranian defense of Al-Aqsa,” said another. “Well executed”, said a third.
This explosion of pride that dominated the media contrasted with comments on the networks, in which some users wondered if the attack had really been so successful; after all, most of the missiles and drones had been shot down before they reached Israel, and some even mocked the authorities for announcing their attack plans in time to neighboring countries and the US , as Abdul·lahian explained to the ambassadors accredited to Iran on Sunday. The minister assured that they had notified the countries of the region 72 hours in advance and that they had also alerted Washington through mediators. Some of the messages were reportedly sent through the Swiss embassy in Tehran, which represents US interests in the country since the two nations severed relations after the seizure of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979. Some other countries in the region would also have acted as intermediaries. However, the spokesman for the US National Security Council, John Kirby, denied yesterday that Iran had warned the United States.
Hence the attack was fully choreographed and all forces were ready to stop the attack, including the deployment in Jordanian territory, a country that already knew in advance that the Iranian attack included flying over its territory. Yesterday it was learned that the foreign minister of that country, Aiman ??Safadi, summoned the Iranian charge d’affaires in Amman because of the tension that arose after that country’s air force shot down Iranian drones. Tehran has said Amman knew those drones were not aimed at the Jordanians. But sources in Tehran say there are many reasons why Jordan decided to act: not only is it one of the US’s biggest allies in the region and signed peace with Israel in 1994, but it fears that Iran and groups in the called “axis of resistance” are trying to destabilize the country.
The spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Nasser Kanani, took advantage of a press conference to send accusations to Western countries. “Instead of making accusations against Iran… they should blame themselves and answer before public opinion the measures they have taken against the war crimes committed by Israel”, the diplomat said yesterday, and asserted that there was no pre-agreement with any nation, as has been suggested, even in Iranian networks.
