Since the United States and Israel launched attacks across Iran last weekend, the Islamic Republic has responded by firing missiles and drones across the region, striking Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and other countries.
But Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Thursday in an interview with “NBC Nightly News” host Tom Llamas that Iran had not made the decision to start a war with its neighbors.
“We have not attacked our neighbors. We have not attacked Muslim countries,” Araghchi said. “We have attacked American targets and bases, American facilities that unfortunately are located on the soil of our neighbors.”
Araghchi said he has spoken to the foreign ministers of these countries to explain that they are not the target.
Llamas noted that some of the Iranian attacks have hit civilian targets, including residential areas in Bahrain, hotels in Dubai and Kuwait’s international airport, but Araghchi dismissed such attacks as “collateral damage.”
Instability in the region has caused oil prices to rise and the US stock market to fall.
For years, Iran has threatened to turn the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway through which 20% of the world’s oil passes, into a free-fire zone if the country is attacked.
It would not be the first time that shipping traffic has been disrupted in the Persian Gulf: during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, dozens of merchant ships were attacked by both sides in what became widely known as the “tanker war.”
On Monday, Iranian Revolutionary Guard Brig. Gen. Ebrahim Jabbari told state television that the strait is closed and any ship passing through would be set on fire.
Asked by Llamas about this threat, Araghchi said that there had been no threat and that the strait is open.
“They have not closed it. It is the ships and oil tankers that do not try to pass, cross the strait, because they are worried about being attacked by either side,” he said. “So we have no intention of closing it now, but as the war continues, we will consider all scenarios.”
The naval war has already spread outside the region. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday that a U.S. submarine had sunk an Iranian military ship with a torpedo in the Indian Ocean, a move that Araghchi, in a post on X, said would set a precedent that the United States would “bitterly regret.”
In the interview with Llamas, Araghchi stated that the ship was unarmed and conducting training exercises and that the attack, in which 87 sailors died, was a “war crime,” although he did not provide any evidence to support that claim.
“You know, when an unarmed ship is attacked for no reason and a large number of sailors die without participating in any battle, that would set a precedent,” he said.
The spread of the war across the region has also raised the question of whether Iran’s key allies, Russia and China, can somehow join the fray.
“They are supporting us politically and in other ways,” Araghchi said, but he did not go into details about whether that includes military support.
“I’m not going to give details of our cooperation with other countries, right in the middle of the war,” he said.
Araghchi said he had heard shelling from the US and Israeli military in recent days but was not worried about his personal safety.
“Maybe everyone fears for their lives in times of war, but you know, I am doing my job. I am doing my duty and it would be an honor for me if my blood was shed for the good of my country. But for the moment, there is no fear of that,” he said.
Before the war began last weekend, Iran had gone through a period of great internal unrest.
Mass protests over economic grievances were sparked in late December when the rial currency plummeted and inflation soared. They became one of the biggest challenges the Iranian regime had faced in the theocracy’s 47-year history, as thousands took to the streets to oppose the ruling clergy.
Iranian security forces carried out the most brutal crackdown in Iran’s modern history.
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency last week estimated the number of people killed in the protests at more than 7,000, with nearly 12,000 cases “under review.”
President Donald Trump told a group of reporters Tuesday that Iran had killed 35,000 protesters.
Araghchi downplayed the protests in the interview with Llamas.
“We were able to handle that. We were able to take care of that, and it was all over,” Araghchi said.
Less than a week since the conflict began, Araghchi said his message to Trump was that the American plan to achieve a “quick and clean victory” had failed.
“There is no way they can win this war. As long as it is necessary, we will resist,” he said. “So you better stop this war and stop killing our people.”
