Axios reported yesterday, citing an unnamed U.S. official and a former Israeli official, that the U.S. had warned Iran in recent days against launching another attack on Israel because Washington will not be able to restrain Israel. The U.S. official said: “We told the Iranians: We won’t be able to hold Israel back, and we won’t be able to make sure that the next attack will be calibrated and targeted as the previous one.” According to Axios, the U.S. official said the message had been directly conveyed to Iran, while the Israeli source said it went via Swiss intermediaries. Iran’s Middle East Spectator cited unnamed sources as saying that “Iran has ‘received, but ignored’ the message.”
As the Axios report came hours after Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s vow of “a crushing response,” it might be taken as Washington’s response to him. Iranian state media had released Khamenei’s video yesterday, in which he says: “The enemies, whether the Zionist regime or the United States of America, will definitely receive a crushing response to what they are doing to Iran and the Iranian nation and to the resistance front.”
