British daily The Guardian reported yesterday that Iran may be reconsidering the format and scale of its retaliation for the July 31 assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, after failing to find support for military action at the Aug. 7 meeting of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar in his remarks to the meeting, called for cool heads and perseverance with a diplomatic path—saying that the assassination must be avenged, but that “we must not fulfill Benjamin Netanyahu’s design for a wider war.” He said the Israeli prime minister was seeking to set a trap.
In an effort to revive a broader and credible diplomatic offensive against Israel, Malaysia proposed at the Jeddah meeting, that a revised emergency session of the UN General Assembly be held, and that attempts be made to give effect to the advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice about Israel’s policy on settlements in occupied Palestine.
According to The Guardian report, acting Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri met with Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, on the sidelines in Jeddah. It was their second meeting in three days, as Safadi had traveled to Tehran on Aug. 5. Safadi told CNN: “Our message has been clear to the Iranians, to the Israelis, that we will not be a battleground for anybody. We will not allow anybody, to the extent that we can, to violate our airspace. Our first responsibility is towards our people, protecting the sovereignty of our country and the safety of our people. So our position is that nobody should use our airspace, nobody should subject our people to the threat of any projectile falling over any of our territory and harming our people, and that is a position that we’ve communicated to both the Iranians and the Israelis in very unequivocal terms.”
