China’s foreign minister tells Israel to stop attacking. Russian FM Lavrov said there was no sign that Tehran was seeking a nuclear bomb.
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Russia and China have criticized the US and Israeli attacks on Iran, with Russia saying it had seen no evidence that Iran was developing nuclear weapons and China calling for an immediate end to joint attacks.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar on Tuesday that the attack on Iran came as negotiations between the United States and Tehran “made significant progress, including in addressing Israel’s security concerns,” according to a statement from the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
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“Unfortunately, this process was interrupted by military actions. China opposes any military attack against Iran by Israel and the United States,” Wang told Israel’s foreign minister in a telephone conversation, the ministry said.
“China calls for an immediate halt to military operations to prevent the conflict from further escalating and getting out of control,” Wang said.
“Force will not truly solve problems; rather it will create new problems and serious long-term consequences,” he added.
According to China’s Foreign Ministry, Saar agreed to Wang’s request to take “concrete measures to ensure the safety of Chinese personnel and institutions” in Iran.
Tuesday’s phone call with Israel marks Beijing’s apparent effort to stabilize the spiraling regional situation, and follows calls Mr. Wang had on Monday with the foreign ministers of Iran, Oman and France to discuss the conflict.
“The United States will not attack anyone with a nuclear bomb.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also criticized the United States and Israel on Tuesday, saying a war against Iran could lead to the very outcome they say they want to prevent: nuclear proliferation.
Foreign Minister Lavrov told a news conference that the logical outcome of the US and Israeli actions could be “the appearance in Iran of forces that support what the US wants to avoid: acquiring a nuclear bomb.”
“Because the United States will not attack anyone who has a nuclear bomb,” Lavrov said.
Foreign Minister Lavrov also said that Arab states could also join the race to acquire nuclear weapons, given the experience of recent days and that “the problem of nuclear proliferation begins to spiral out of control.”
Israel is widely seen as the only nuclear state in the Middle East, but it has neither confirmed nor denied that fact.
“The seemingly paradoxically declared noble goal of starting a war to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons could stimulate exactly the opposite tendency,” he said.
Foreign Minister Lavrov said Russia had not yet seen evidence that Iran was developing nuclear weapons and spoke with his Iranian counterpart Abbas Aragushi on Tuesday, saying Russia was ready to help find a diplomatic solution to the conflict while rejecting the use of “unprovoked military aggression” by the United States and Israel in the region.
When the United States and Israel launched a pre-emptive strike against Iran on Saturday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry accused the close ally of carrying out a “premeditated and groundless act of armed aggression against a sovereign and independent member state of the United Nations.”
The ministry said the two countries were hiding their true intentions to overthrow the Tehran regime as a “cover” for negotiations to normalize relations with Iran.
The United States and Israel are “rapidly pushing the region into a humanitarian, economic, and potentially radiological disaster,” the ministry warned.
“They are fully responsible for the negative consequences of this man-made crisis, including unpredictable chain reactions and spirals of violence,” the statement added.
Russia faces its own accusations of aggression against a sovereign state after launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a war now in its fifth year.
