Iran’s Foreign Minister said on Sunday that it will keep fighting unless the war ends permanently, rejecting calls for an unconditional ceasefire.
“There needs to be a permanent end to the war,” Abbas Araghchi said. “Unless we get to that, I think we need to continue fighting for the sake of our people and our security.
“What we are doing is a legal act of self-defence and we have every right to do that,” he added.
Speaking to NBC news, Mr Araghchi accused the US and Israel of attacking civilians and infrastructure and called on President Donald Trump to “apologise to people of the region and the Iranian people for the killings and destruction”.
“They are killing our people, they are killing girl students, they are attacking hospitals, freshwater desalination (and) refineries,” he said.
Asked what conditions Iran would accept to end the war and return to negotiations, Mr Araghchi said Tehran would not consider a ceasefire until the US and Israel justified their aggression.
“They have to explain why they started this aggression before we come to the point to even consider a ceasefire. This is not our war. This is imposed on us by the United States, by Israel,” he said.
Mr Trump said last week that one of the reasons for launching the war was that Iran would soon have missiles capable of reaching the US but Mr Araghchi dismissed the claims.
“This is in fact misinformation,” he said. “There is no evidence, there is no intelligence, nothing to indicate that Iran has long-range missiles which can reach United States soil.”
Mr Aragchi said Iran’s military actions had focused instead on American forces in the region.
“What we can do is to attack American bases and American installations around us, which are unfortunately in the soil of our, you know, neighbour countries,” he added.
He also defended Iranian attacks on Gulf neighbours during the war.
“We are attacking American bases, American installations, American assets, which are unfortunately located in the soils of our neighbours,” he said.
Mr Araghchi added that President Masoud Pezeshkian had apologised to the people of the region for “the inconveniences they have faced because of this aggression by the United States and retaliation by us.”
On Saturday, Mr Pezeshkian said Tehran would refrain from attacking Gulf neighbours unless their territory was used to launch US or Israeli operations against Iran, while apologising to the region after Iranian strikes caused deaths in Kuwait, the UAE and Oman.
